Kurt Sanderling was a German conductor, born on September 19, 1912, in Orzysz, then in East Prussia. He grew up in a Jewish family; his father was a timber merchant. Sanderling attended school in Königsberg and, from 1926, in Berlin. He studied piano and music theory but received no formal conducting training.
In 1931, he began working as a concertmaster at the German Opera in Charlottenburg. He later worked as a concertmaster with the All-Union Radio Orchestra and conducted it from 1937 to 1941. He made his operatic conducting debut in 1937 with Mozart’s The Abduction from the Seraglio. From 1940 to 1942, he was chief conductor of the Kharkiv Philharmonic Orchestra. He became a second conductor of the Leningrad Philharmonic Orchestra in 1942, serving alongside Yevgeny Mravinsky until 1960.
In 1960, Sanderling became chief conductor of the Berlin Symphony Orchestra, a post he held until 1977. He also led the Saxon State Orchestra from 1964 to 1967 and served on the board of trustees of Berlin’s Schauspielhaus from 1994 to 1998. He toured widely in European cities, including Prague, Salzburg, Vienna, and Warsaw. From 1972 he periodically appeared with the New Philharmonia Orchestra, and from 1979 with the Tokyo Symphony Orchestra.
His recordings brought renewed attention to his work. His interpretations of Beethoven, including the symphonies and concertos with Mitsuko Uchida, Brahms’s symphonies, Mahler’s Fourth, Ninth, and Tenth symphonies, Sibelius’s complete symphonies, and Shostakovich’s First, Fifth, Sixth, Eighth, Tenth, and Fifteenth symphonies were especially noted. He maintained a friendship with Shostakovich until the composer’s death. Sanderling’s performance style was characterized by intellectual rigor and close adherence to the score. He received the title of Honored Artist of the RSFSR in 1956 and the GDR National Prize in 1962 and 1987. He continued to conduct occasionally in the 1990s; his final public performance took place in January 2002. His sons Thomas, Michael, and Stefan Sanderling also became conductors, while Michael was also a cellist. Sanderling died in Berlin on September 18, 2011, one day before his 99th birthday, and was buried at Pankow III Cemetery.
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