Antonio de Almeida (conductor) - Conducting

Conducting

He began conducting for Portuguese Radio in Lisbon in 1949, and soon after was appointed to his first conducting post at the Oporto Symphony Orchestra. While there, he invited Thomas Beecham to guest conduct the orchestra. He was the conductor of the Portuguese Radio in Lisbon (1957–1960) and Stuttgart Philharmonic (1962–1964). He worked at the Opéra National de Paris 1965-1967. He was principal guest conductor of the Houston Symphony (1969–1971) and then music director of the Orchestre philharmonique de Nice (1971–1978). He became the music director of the Moscow Symphony Orchestra in 1993, a position he held at his death.

His American debut came in November 1960 with the opening of the eighth subscription season of New York’s American Opera Society at The Town Hall. He led the Symphony of the Air in a concert version of Christoph Willibald Gluck’s Orfeo ed Euridice. New York Times reviewer Harold C. Schonberg wrote of the conductor “He knows his business. Cool, not flamboyant of gesture, capable, he held the performance together as nicely as one would desire”. He also wrote that “Mr. de Almeida is a conductor to watch”.