Music
Victor Kolar
1888–1957 · conductor, composer, violinist
Budapest-born conductor who spent two decades on the podium of the Detroit Symphony Orchestra, rising from assistant to principal conductor, and died in Detroit.
- Born
Budapest, Hungary- Died
Detroit, Michigan
aged 69- Detroit years
- 1920–1957
- Field
- Music
01 / The Detroit story
The Detroit story
Kolar was born to a Jewish family in Budapest and trained at the Prague Conservatory, studying violin with Otakar Ševčík and composition with Antonín Dvořák. After fifteen years as a violinist in the Pittsburgh Symphony and the New York Symphony, he joined the Detroit Symphony Orchestra in 1920 as assistant conductor to Ossip Gabrilowitsch. For the next two decades he shared the podium at Orchestra Hall on Woodward Avenue with Gabrilowitsch, eventually becoming the orchestra's principal conductor. He left the orchestra in 1941 but stayed in Detroit, where he died in 1957. He also composed a symphony, tone poems and orchestral suites; his suite Americana won a 1914 prize from the Illinois State Teachers Association.
Highlights
- Pupil of Antonín Dvořák in Prague
- Joined the Detroit Symphony Orchestra in 1920
- Rose from assistant to principal conductor by 1941
- Suite Americana won a 1914 composition prize
02 / Their Detroit places
Their Detroit places 1
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 · 1920–1939
Detroit Symphony Orchestra — Orchestra Hall
The Detroit Symphony's home hall during Kolar's years; restored and again the orchestra's home, now part of the Max M. and Marjorie S. Fisher Music Center.