George Cleve, Conductor Who Interpreted Mozart, Dies at 79

George Wolfgang Cleve (1935 or 1936 – August 27, 2015) was an Austrian born American musical conductorMr. Cleve, who was born in Vienna, fled with his family to the United States and spent most of his American career on the West Coast.NYTimes Obit Cleve studied at the High School of Music and Art and the Mannes College of Music. His conducting teachers included Pierre Monteux, Leonard Bernstein, George Szell and Franco Ferrara. He guest conducted many orchestra in both the United States, Great Britain, and continental Europe, including the New York Philharmonic, Los Angeles Philharmonic, the Montreal Symphony, the Philadelphia Orchestra, the Royal Philharmonic, the Swedish Radio Orchestra, the Russian National Orchestra, and the Singapore Symphony, among others. Cleve was appointed music director of the Winnipeg Symphony Orchestra for the 1969-70 season, and then served as the music director of the San Jose Symphony from 1972 to 1992. Cleve was also an active opera conductor, having led performances of Carmen with the San Francisco Opera, Don Giovanni, Pagliacci, and Cavalleria rusticana with Opera San José, and other productions with the Opera Company of Philadelphia, San Francisco Spring Opera, Long Beach Opera, the Spoleto USA Festival and the Mannheim Opera. Cleve was the founder, in 1974, and director of the Midsummer Mozart Festival in the San Francisco Bay Area. Cleve died at the age of 79 in Berkeley, California in 2015.

VIDEO: George Cleve conducts the National Philharmonic Orchestra of Russia...Schumann, Symphony no. 4