Harold Byrns (13 September 1903The Music Sack – 22 February 1977) was a German-American conductor and orchestrator.
Biography He was born Hans Bernstein in Hanover, Kingdom of Prussia, German Empire, in 1903. His father had formed a chamber music society in Hanover, and he followed in his father's footsteps. He studied with Walter Gieseking, Erich Kleiber and Leo Blech at the Stern Conservatory in Berlin, and became assistant to Kleiber and Blech. He worked as a conductor in Lübeck, Oldenburg, and Berlin (Staatsoper, Deutsche Oper) before emigrating to Italy in 1933 and then to the United States in 1936. He changed his name from Hans Bernstein to Harold Byrns because he felt he could not make it in America with a Jewish name. He formed his own chamber orchestra, the Harold Byrns Chamber Orchestra, which was regarded as the American counterpart of the Boyd Neel String Orchestra.bearac reissues While living in Los Angeles he wrote and orchestrated music for various films.IMDB listing
He arranged the music for Adolphe Adam's ballet Giselle for a February 1941 production by Anton Dolin at the Ballet Theatre on Broadway.IBDB In 1945 he orchestrated Lerner and Loewe's musical The Day Before Spring for Broadway. He was accepted for the role on the recommendation of Maurice Abravanel, who considered him a great orchestrator.Gene Lees, The Musical Worlds of Lerner and Loewe
After the war he returned to Berlin, and he conducted at the Deutsche Oper, Komische Oper, and was a guest with various symphony orchestras, particularly the Hanover and Turin (RAI) Radio orchestras. He gave Mahler concerts with the Vienna Symphony and on Italian Radio.
Harold Byrns founded the Los Angeles Chamber Symphony in 1949. In 1950 he premiered George Antheil's Serenade No. 2.A joyful drunkenness of contradiction (PDF). New World Records, Recorded Anthology of American Music 2006. Archived from the original (22 November 2019). Retrieved 13 June 2025.
He was associated with performances of the works of Arnold Schoenberg and to an extent made his reputation with that composer.Michael H. Kater, Composers of the Nazi Era He gave the first Los Angeles performance of Schoenberg's Chamber Symphony, Op. 9. In 1949 he conducted the Los Angeles Chamber Symphony in a concert to celebrate Schoenberg's 75th birthday. He performed Moses und Aron in 1971 with the Deutsche Oper.
On 17 October 1954, Harold Byrns conducted the first public performance of Erich Wolfgang Korngold's Symphony in F-sharp major, on Austrian radio. (It was described as "poorly rehearsed and performed", and the work would not receive its premiere concert performance until 27 November 1972, in Munich, under the baton of Rudolf Kempe).Composers’ Datebook That year he also conducted the first performance of Berthold Goldschmidt's Sinfonietta with the Suisse Romande Orchestra.Boosey & Hawkes: Goldschmidt Timeline
He orchestrated various early works by Gustav Mahler, including six songs from Lieder und Gesänge,NYT 15 February 1987 which were recorded as part of Giuseppe Sinopoli's complete Mahler cycle,Amazon.comMahler’s Song Cycles and which have been described as "skillful and idiomatic".Music web international He was a personal friend of Mahler's widow Alma, and he played an important role in making her agree to public performances of Deryck Cooke's realisation of the 10th Symphony. She felt it was "a private love letter" from Gustav to her, and refused to even listen to a private studio recording made for her. Byrns persuaded her to listen to the tape, and she gave her immediate approval.Access my Library For his devotion to Mahler, Byrns was awarded the Kilenyi Mahler Medal of Honor by the Bruckner Society of America.
Harold Byrns made a specialty of orchestrating piano and vocal/piano music. For Otto Klemperer's debut in Copenhagen in 1947, he arranged a suite from Henry Purcell's The Fairy Queen.Testament booklet note He had a commission from Herbert von Karajan to orchestrate some piano pieces by Robert Schumann, and from Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau for some Mahler songs for which he also made the English translation. (Fischer-Dieskau and his son, Dr. Martin Fischer-Dieskau, later Chief Conductor in Canada and Taiwan, both studied conducting with Harold Byrns.) He was responsible for the complete orchestration of Nicolas Nabokov's opera Love's Labour's Lost, premiered in Brussels in 1973.
He made various recordings with the Los Angeles Chamber Symphony, including the premiere recording of Béla Bartók's Music for Strings, Percussion and CelestaTime magazine, 18 Feb 1952, New Records and Igor Stravinsky's Violin Concerto with Ivry Gitlis.50 Years of VOX
Harold Byrns died in Berlin in 1977, and is buried there.
His son was Peter Salm (1919–1990), Professor Emeritus of Literature and German at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, Ohio, and a specialist in the works of Goethe and other European literary figures.NYT 25 Oct 1990
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