Oskar Fried (August 10, 1871 – July 5, 1941), was a German conductor and composer.
Born in Berlin, the son of a Jewish shopkeeper, he worked as a clown, a stable boy and a dog trainer before studying composition with Iwan Knorr (1891-92, Hoch Conservatory) and Engelbert Humperdinck (as private student) in Frankfurt. He later moved to Dusseldorf to study painting and art history. After a spell in Paris, he returned to Berlin in 1898 to study counterpoint with Xavier Scharwenka.
The performance of his composition Das trunkene Lied ("the drunken song") for chorus and orchestra brought Fried his first public success and led to his appointment in 1904 as conductor of a Berlin choral society. In 1905 he first met Gustav Mahler. The meeting was successful and resulted in an invitation to conduct Mahler's Resurrection Symphony in Berlin in November 1905 (Otto Klemperer led the offstage band during this performance). The next year Fried introduced Russia to Mahler's music when he performed the same work in St Petersburg. From 1907 to 1910 he directed a choral society known as the Sternscher Gesangverein in Berlin. In 1913 Fried conducted the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra in the second performance of Mahler's Ninth Symphony.
In 1922 Fried went to the USSR as the first foreign conductor invited to perform after the Russian Revolution, and was greeted by Lenin on the station platform. In 1924 Fried made the first recording of any Mahler symphony, the Second, with the Berlin Staatskapelle. This performance has been praised as "remarkably successful", a "highly adventurous undertaking for an acoustic recording" which required "careful planning and experimentation". That same year Fried also made the first recording of any complete Bruckner symphony: his Seventh.
In 1934 Fried left Germany for Tbilisi in the Soviet republic of Georgia, driven away from his homeland by the antisemitism of the Nazi regime. He conducted the Tbilisi opera and later the Moscow Radio Symphony Orchestra, becoming a Soviet citizen. He died in Moscow in 1941.
W.A. Mozart: Serenade no 13 in G major, K 525 "Eine kleine Nachtmusik"
Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra, 1928
Edvard Grieg: Peer Gynt, Op. 23
Berlin State Opera Orchestra, 1928
Gioachino Rossini: 'La gazza ladra' Overture
Berlin State Opera Orchestra, 1928
Conductor: OSKAR FRIED
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