Lorin Maazel (1930–2014) was perhaps the most interesting musician of his time. The very number of his engagements as Principal Conductor made him exceptional. After studying piano, violin, harmony, counterpoint and composition, and making his first appearances as a youthful conductor in the USA, where his family had moved from France in 1932, he played the violin in the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra and studied philosophy, economics, literature, French and Russian in his spare time. He went to Italy on a scholarship in the early 1950s, was repeatedly engaged – often by broadcasting stations – as a conductor, was the first American and at the same time the youngest conductor at the Bayreuth Festival when he conducted Lohengrin there in 1960, made his BBC concert debut with Mahler’s Second Symphony in London and directed the Radio Symphony Orchestra of Berlin as its Principal Conductor (1964-75), was appointed General Music Director of the city’s Deutsche Oper (1965-71), then headed the Cleveland Orchestra (1972-82), the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra (1988-96), Orchestre National de France (1988-90) and finally from 1993 the Symphony Orchestra of Bavarian Radio. He made his New York Met debut with Don Giovanni (1962) and debuted at the Salzburg Festival with The Marriage of Figaro (1963). He made a memorable appearance in London in 1988 when in a single day he performed all nine Beethoven symphonies with three different orchestras in aid of charity.