Leo Borchard

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Lew Ljewitsch "Leo" Borchard (March 31, 1899 – August 23, 1945) was a Russian conductor and briefly musical director of the Berlin Philharmonic.

He was born in Moscow to German parents, and grew up in Saint Petersburg where he received a solid musical education. In 1920, after the Russian Revolution, he emigrated to Germany. Otto Klemperer engaged him as his assistant at the Kroll Opera in Berlin (Klemperer, lacking confidence in his own abilities, expected Borchard to critique his conducting technique).[1] He conducted the Berlin Philharmonic for the first time in January 1933. In 1935, he was banned by the Nazi regime as politically unreliable.

During World War II he was a Resistance activist, remaining in Berlin. On 26 May 1945, two and a half weeks after Germany's unconditional surrender, he conducted the Berlin Philharmonic in a concert featuring Tchaikovsky's Symphony No. 4 to great public acclaim. One week later he was appointed musical director of the orchestra by the Soviet official Nikolai Bersarin, replacing Wilhelm Furtwängler who was in exile in Switzerland. His anti-Nazi credentials and command of the Russian language enabled him to enjoy a close relationship with the occupiers.[2]

Borchard was killed on 23 August 1945. His British driver misinterpreted an American sentry's signal to stop and the soldier shot him dead.[3]

[edit] Notes

  1. ^ Heyworth, Peter (1983). Otto Klemperer, His Life and Times: Volume 1, 1885-1933. Cambridge University Press, 385. ISBN 0521244889. 
  2. ^ Monod, David (2005). Settling Scores: German Music, Denazification, & the Americans, 1945-1953. University of North Carolina Press, 75. ISBN 0807829447. 
  3. ^ Stivers, William (2004), “Victors and Vanquished: Americans as Occupiers in Berlin. 1945-1949”, in Combat Studies Institute, Armed Diplomacy: Two Centuries of American Campaigning, Fort Leavenworth, KS: Combat Studies Institute Press, pp. 161, ISBN 1428916504, <http://books.google.com/books?id=p5agK7lACykC&pg=PA161&vq=borchard&dq=%22Armed+Diplomacy%22&sig=tt9fzhjhj10t-C3sIVYds75D20k> 

[edit] References


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Berliner Philharmoniker Principal Conductors

Ludwig von Brenner (1882) · Hans von Bülow (1887) · Arthur Nikisch (1895) · Wilhelm Furtwängler (1922) · Leo Borchard (1945) · Sergiu Celibidache (1945) · Wilhelm Furtwängler (1952) · Herbert von Karajan (1954) · Claudio Abbado (1989) · Simon Rattle (2002)