Music
Antal Doráti
1906–1988 · conductor, composer
Budapest-born conductor and pupil of Bartók and Kodály who led the Detroit Symphony Orchestra from 1977 to 1981 and put it back on the world's record shelves.
- Born
Budapest, Hungary- Died
Gerzensee, Switzerland
aged 82- Birth name
- Antal Deutsch
- Also known as
- Doráti Antal · Antal Dorati
- Detroit years
- 1977–1981
- Field
- Music
01 / The Detroit story
The Detroit story
Doráti first led the Detroit Symphony as a guest in December 1953, during the Paul Paray years, and returned in 1971 and 1975 before becoming music director in 1977. By then he was past seventy and had made hundreds of recordings in Minneapolis, London and Stockholm, and he made recording the core of his Detroit plan. The orchestra, then based in the riverfront Ford Auditorium, signed with Decca's London label and produced seventeen releases in his four seasons, many of them among the company's earliest digital recordings. The sessions took place in the acoustically prized auditorium of the shuttered United Artists Theatre on Bagley Street. His 1981 Detroit recording of Stravinsky's The Rite of Spring won the Grand Prix du Disque, a first for the orchestra. He also led the DSO's first European tour in 1979 and recorded Bartók's complete Miraculous Mandarin and Music for Strings, Percussion and Celesta with it, keeping faith with his old teacher.
Highlights
- Music director of the Detroit Symphony Orchestra, 1977–1981
- Seventeen Decca/London releases with the DSO, many early digital recordings
- Stravinsky's Rite of Spring with the DSO won the Grand Prix du Disque
- Led the orchestra's first European tour in 1979
- Studied with Kodály, Weiner and Bartók at the Liszt Academy in Budapest
- Made more than 600 recordings in his career
02 / Their Detroit places
Their Detroit places 2
Where they lived, worked, performed and liked to hang out. Closed and demolished places stay here too, because they are part of the city's history.
Performed here · 1953, 1971, 1975, 1977–1981
Ford Auditorium
Demolished · 1956–2011
The riverfront hall that was the Detroit Symphony's home during Doráti's guest visits and his whole tenure as music director; it was demolished in 2011 and the site is now open ground.
Recorded here · 1979–1981
United Artists Theatre (auditorium)
Demolished · 1928–2022
The closed 1928 movie palace whose auditorium served as the orchestra's recording studio for Doráti's Decca sessions, including The Rite of Spring (1981); the auditorium was demolished in 2022 and the office tower became apartments.