Szymon Goldberg

Szymon Goldberg (1 June 1909 – 19 July 1993) was a Polish-born American violinist and conductor.

Born in Włocławek, Congress Poland, Goldberg played the violin as a child growing up in Warsaw. In 1917 he moved to Berlin and took violin lessons with Carl Flesch.

After a recital in Warsaw in 1921, he was soon engaged as concert-master of the Dresden Philharmonic from 1925 to 1929. In 1929 he was appointed concertmaster of the Berlin Philharmonic, but was forced by the rise of the Third Reich to leave the orchestra in 1934, despite Wilhelm Furtwängler's attempts to safeguard the Jewish members of the orchestra. He then toured Europe. He made his American debut in New York in 1938. While on a tour of Asia, he was interned in Java by the Japanese from 1942 to 1945.

Eventually he went to the United States and became a naturalised American citizen in 1953. From 1951 to 1965 he taught at the Aspen Music School. Concurrently he was active as a conductor. In 1955 he founded the Netherlands Chamber Orchestra in Amsterdam, which he led until 1979. He also took the ensemble on many tours. From the years 1977 to 1979 he was the conductor of the Manchester Camerata.

He taught at Yale University from 1978 to 1982, the Juilliard School in New York City from 1978, the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia from 1980, and the Manhattan School of Music in New York from 1981. From 1990 until his death, he conducted the New Japan Philharmonic in Tokyo. He died in Ôyama-machi, Japan.