Alfred Hertz

Who was Alfred Hertz?

Alfred Hertz was a 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 British composer 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, a post he held 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.