Ossip Gabrilowitsch

Russian American pianist and conductor (1878–1936)

Ossip Salomonovich Gabrilowitsch (Осип Сoломонович Габрилович, Osip Solomonovich Gabrilovich; he used the German transliteration Gabrilowitsch in the West) (7 February 1878 [O. S. 26 January 1878]14 September 1936) was a Russian born American pianist, conductor and composer.

Ossip Gabrilowitsch was born into a Jewish family in Saint Petersburg. His parents were Salomon Gabrilowitsch and Rose Segall. Nina, the last known lineal descendant of Mark Twain, died on 16 January 1966 in a Los Angeles hotel. She had been a heavy drinker, and bottles of pills and alcohol were found in her room. Her death was ruled a suicide. From 1910 to 1914, he was conductor of the Munich Konzertverein (later known as the Munich Philharmonic). At the outbreak of World War I, he was arrested as an enemy national. Through the intervention of the nuncio to Bavaria, Archbishop Eugenio Pacelli (later Pope Pius XII), Gabrilowitsch was freed from jail, and then he headed to the United States via Zürich in August 1914. He settled in the US, and was offered the post of conductor of the Boston Symphony Orchestra. In declining, he recommended that the Boston board appoint the recently arrived Sergei Rachmaninoff. In 1918 he was appointed the founding director of the Detroit Symphony Orchestra, while still maintaining his life as a concert pianist. Before accepting the conductor's position, he demanded a new auditorium be built, and this was the impetus for the building of Orchestra Hall. Gabrilowitsch composed a few works, primarily short piano pieces for his own use. He was a National Patron of Delta Omicron, an international professional music fraternity. He died from stomach cancer on September 14, 1936 in Detroit, Michigan. He is buried in the Langdon plot of the Woodlawn Cemetery in Elmira, New York.

Ossip Gabrilowitsch plays for Welte Mignon on 4 July 1905 Johannes Brahms Intermezzo in C major, Op. 119, No. 3