Dimitris Mitropoulos

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Category: Music

Published on Friday, 08 November 2019 16:06

We are back with another article in our category “Culture”. This week we will present an artist called Dimitris Mitropoulos (Δημήτρης Μητρόπουλος) to you. He was a very famous Greek conductor, pianist and composer of the 20^th century.

He has been born in Athens at the 1^st of March in 1896. His father was the owner of a leather goods shop in the city. He already played a lot of music with his friends when he was a child. Dimitris Mitropoulos also studied there at a well known conservatory in Athens. He studied music in Brussels and Berlin, as well. At a concert with the Berlin Philharmonic in 1930 Dimitris played the solo part at the piano and conducted the orchestra at the same time, becoming the first one doing this simultaneously.

A few years later he moved to the United States of America and eventually became a citizen there in 1946. Three years after that he began working with the New York Philharmonic. He finally became the music director at the peak of his orchestral career. He recorded many songs with the orchestra during that time for Columbia Records.

Dimitris Mitropoulos had a big advantage as a conductor since he had a photographic memory. He was also a very religious man living a monk-like life style as a Greek Orthodox.

He died in Milan at the age of 64 because of a heart attack during a rehearsal.

Now you have the opportunity to listen to a piece of music Dimitris Mitropoulis conducted in the New York Philharmonic. Just click on the YouTube video below.