Zweig, Fritz
Zweig, Fritz
Zweig, Fritz, Bohemian-born American conductor and teacher; b. Olmütz, Sept. 8, 1893; d. Los Angeles, Feb. 28, 1984. He received training in theory from Schoenberg in Vienna. After serving on the staff of the Mannheim National Theater (1912-14; 1919-21), he was asst. conductor at the Barmen-Elberfeld Opera (1921-23). In 1923 he went to Berlin as a conductor at the Volksoper, and then was a conductor at the Städtische Oper from 1927. When the Nazis came to power in 1933, Zweig was banned from the Städtische Oper. In 1934 he became a conductor at the German Theater in Prague. In 1938 he fled Prague in the face of the Nazi dismemberment of Czechoslovakia and lived in Paris. With the defeat of France by the Nazis in 1940, he once more fled and made his way to the U.S. He subsequently was active as a music teacher in Los Angeles. His most notable student was Lawrence Foster.
—Nicolas Slonimsky/Laura Kuhn/Dennis McIntire