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 1906 tour and was present when the city was devastated by earthquake and fire. He later became music director of the San Francisco Symphony, from 1915 to 1930, receiving praise and a cover story in Time for his leadership and accomplishments. Longtime San Francisco violinist David Schneider noted, in his history of the orchestra, that Hertz returned as a guest conductor of the orchestra after 1930.
Hertz led the San Francisco Symphony's first recordings, for the Victor Talking Machine Company, released from 1925 to 1930. The initial recordings were made with the old acoustical process in Victor's Oakland plant, where the orchestra's first electric recordings were also made; the 1927 recordings were made in the Columbia Theater, which was renamed the Geary Theater, in San Francisco, and the 1928 sessions took place in Oakland's Scottish Rite Auditorium. The recordings have been digitally remastered and were issued for the first time on CD by Pristine Classical, as the San Francisco Symphony celebrated its centennial during the 2011-12 season.
Hertz also conducted the orchestra in its first radio broadcasts, beginning in 1926. After 1930, Hertz guest conducted the orchestra, including The Standard Hour radio broadcasts on NBC. Hertz spent much of later years in Berkeley, California, but died in San Francisco, California at age 69 from heart disease.