Jonathan Sternberg
Pioneer of orchestral LPS who recorded young Alfred Brendel
JONATHAN STERNBERG, who has died aged 98, was an American musician who enjoyed a brief but significant role as a conductor and producer in the early years of the LP era in postwar Vienna.
He was responsible for Alfred Brendel’s first disc, a recording of Prokofiev’s Piano Concerto No 5 that in 1951 was completed in two difficult sessions at the Vienna Konzerthaus, where Sternberg struggled to get the sound right.
Although dismayed that Brendel later chose to dismiss the result as “not marvellous”, Sternberg ploughed on, recording Mozart piano concertos with a young Paul Baduraskoda, Haydn symphonies for the musicologist HC Robbins Landon, and Schubert for Louise Hanson-dyer, the founder of L’oiseau-lyre Records.
By the late 1950s he was conducting European premieres of works by American composers such as Charles Ives, Leonard Bernstein and Ned Rorem. In Britain, the three times that he conducted at the Festival Hall between 1959 and 1963 were dominated by the music of Beethoven.
Jonathan Sternberg was born in New York on July 27 1919. His father, Louis, was a distinguished allergist.
Young Johnny was six when his parents bought him a violin, but a broken finger ended any hopes of being a virtuoso fiddler. By 10 he was conducting orchestras in front of the radio. He was educated at James Madison High School and at 15 enrolled at music school, signing up for extra classes in conducting.
He grew a moustache in the hope of being taken seriously and before long was teaching evening classes to students twice his age. Meanwhile, he turned pages for the violinist Jascha Heifetz at $2 a session, later doing the same for the Romanian conductor George Enescu, although now charging $3.
His conducting debut came in 1941 with the National Youth Administration Symphony Orchestra in a programme that included An Outdoor Overture by his fellow Brooklynite, Aaron Copland.
Drafted into the US Army, Lieutenant Sternberg wound up in Shanghai, stepping in when the local orchestra’s conductor was found to be a Japanese collaborator. Rehearsals were in a former stable with no heating, and before they could start, each member of this group of largely European exiles wanted to play his own national anthem. By the time his war was over Sternberg could speak smatterings of Russian, Chinese, Italian, German and Hungarian.
Back in the US he studied with Pierre Monteux and was “pacing the pavements” looking for an orchestral position (“the New York Philharmonic was evidently not ready for me”) before heading to Europe, where he joined the Vienna Opera and met Robbins Landon, who was researching the music of Haydn. Being a car owner, Sternberg was able to drive him to monasteries, churches and libraries in search of material.
By the mid-1950s Sternberg’s recording career was over. He was director of the Halifax Symphony Orchestra in Canada (1957-58) and the Royal Flemish Opera (1962-66), before returning to New York as music director of the Harkness Ballet.
One day, at a party hosted by Erich Leinsdorf, he remarked to the conductor’s sons that they must be very proud of their illustrious father. Their response, that they hardly knew him because he was never there when they were growing up, stopped Sternberg, who had two children under 10, in his tracks. Thereafter he turned to teaching, becoming Professor of Conducting at Boyer College of Music in Philadelphia, until his retirement in 1989, still championing American composers. In 1974 he was a founder of the Conductors Guild, the professional body for American conductors.
Jonathan Sternberg married the artist Ursula Hertz in 1957. She died in 2000. He is survived by their son and daughter.
Jonathan Sternberg, born July 27 1919, died May 8 2018