Antal Dorati
Antal Dorati (April 9, 1906 - November 13, 1988) was a conductor and composer.Dorati was born in Budapest, his father a violinist with the Budapest Philharmonic Orchestra. Dorati studied music there, his teachers including Zoltán Kodály for composition and Béla Bartók for piano. He made his conducting debut in 1924 with the Budapest Royal Opera.
Dorati held posts as principal conductor of the Dallas Symphony Orchestra (1945-48), Minneapolis Symphony Orchestra (1949-60), the BBC Symphony Orchestra (1963-66), the Stockholm Philharmonic (1966-70), the National Symphony in Washington, D.C. (1970-77), the Detroit Symphony Orchestra (1977-81) and the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra (1975-79). He condcuted the world premiere of Tibor Serly's completion of Bartók's Viola Concerto with the Minneapolis Symphony in 1949. He made many recordings, notably of pieces by Bartók and Kodály and the complete symphonies of Joseph Haydn with the Philharmonia Hungarica.
As well as composing wholly original pieces, he arranged pieces by Johann Strauss II for the ballet Graduation Ball. His autobiography, Notes of Seven Decades, was published in 1979.
