Alfred Hertz

Alfred Hertz (July 15, 1872 – April 17, 1942), a German conductor born in Frankfurt am Main, Germany. As a child, he contracted infantile paralysis and walked with a cane after that. In 1898, Hertz met the Bradford-born Frederick Delius, who was then living in Paris, and on 30 May 1899, at the age of 36, Hertz conducted the first-ever concert of Delius's music, in The St James's Hall in London. Hertz first came to prominence conducting Wagner at the Metropolitan Opera in New York. Some of the performances he conducted were experimentally recorded by the Met's librarian Lionel Mapleson on what are now known as the Mapleson Cylinders and later issued on LP. He first came to San Francisco as a conductor of the Metropolitan Opera during its...