Thomas Schippers

Thomas Schippers was a successful American conductor who died from lung cancer at the age of 47 in 1977. The New York Times called him "one of the golden boys of his generation of American conductors" and said that at the peak of his career he was regarded as one most likely to succeed Leonard Bernstein as music director of the New York Philharmonic. He conducted many concerts with the orchestra and also at the Metropolitan Opera where he was celebrated for productions of works by Gian Carlo Menotti and Samuel Barber. Born in Michigan he learned to play the piano as a child and performed regularly on local radio. He studied the organ at the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia and did further study at Yale University and at Tanglewood. A meeting with Menotti led to conducting offers in New York and Europe. He conducted the Philadelphia Orchestra and made his debut at Milan's La Scala in 1954 and at the Bayreuth Festival in Germany in 1964. Pierre Boulez won that post to succeed Bernstein in New York and in 1970 Schippers was named music director of the Cincinnati Symphony. His recording of 'Prokofiev: Alexander Nevsky, op. 78' with the New York Philharmonic earned him his first Grammy Award nomination for Best Classical Choral Performance in 1962; the album was remastered for re-release by Sony Classical in 2004. He was nominated for Best Opera Recording three timesfor 'Puccini: La Boheme' in 1964, for 'Verdi: La Forze Del Destino' in 1965 and for 'Rossini: The Siege of Corinth' in 1975, the latter which was also nominated for Classical Album of the Year. He won a Grammy Award with Leontyne Price in 1969 for 'Barber: Two Scenes from 'Antony And Cleopatra'/Knoxville: Summer of 1915'. He claimed to interviewers that until he lost his wife to cancer and then fell ill himself he had always been lucky but in its obituary, the New York Times noted his talent: "The critics acknowledged he had plenty of that."

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