Theodore Bloomfield

Theodore Bloomfield (1923–1998) was an American conductor. He studied at Oberlin College in Ohio and the Juilliard School in Manhattan, taking piano lessons from Claudio Arrau and also learning French horn to gain experience in orchestral performance. For two summers, Bloomfield had been studying conducting with Pierre Monteux in Hancock, Maine. In 1946, Monteux conducted The San Francisco Symphony Orchestra in the premiere of Bloomfield's transcription of Toccata and Fugue in C major by Johann Sebastian Bach. Artur Rodzinski with The New York Philharmonic Orchestra also performed this score. He debuted as a conductor with New York Little Symphony Orchestra at Carnegie Chamber Music Hall on December 21, 1945. The same year, Bloomfield became an apprentice conductor to George Szell at The Cleveland Orchestra. He also worked at the Berkshire Music Center and accompanied Licia Albanese on the piano in the late forties. In 1952, Bloomfield gave his first concert with Orchester Der Wiener Staatsoper at the Wiener Konzerthaus. Bloomfield worked as the conductor of Oregon Symphony Orchestra from 1955 to 1959. His tenure in Portland was marked with an introduction of over 60 new works and featured performances with pianists Arthur Rubinstein and Rudolf Serkin, sopranos Birgit Nilsson and Elisabeth Schwarzkopf, and violinist Isaac Stern. In 1958, Theodore Bloomfield took a position at the Rochester Philharmonic Orchestra. Serving there for almost five years, the conductor couldn't find common ground with musicians and staff, alienating many in the musical community at the time. Eventually, he resigned and went to Europe again, serving as the conductor at the Hamburgische Staatsoper in 1964–66. Bloomfield retired in the United States in the early nineties.