Edo de Waart
Dutch conductor Edo de Waart, 82, is retiring as conductor after a career spanning more than sixty years. De Waart has been chief conductor of the Dutch Radio Philharmonic Orchestra (RFO) for many years and was due to give two more concerts with the orchestra this coming weekend, but has canceled them. He announced that it was no longer possible for him and called it « a difficult decision ».
De Waart began his career in the early 1960s as an oboist and joined the Concertgebouw Orchestra in 1963. A year later, he won a conducting competition in New York and spent a year as Leonard Bernstein’s assistant with the New York Philharmonic. He then became assistant to Bernard Haitink at the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra. From 1967 he conducted the Rotterdam Philharmonic Orchestra. After a stint with the San Francisco Symphony, he became chief conductor of the Radio Philharmonic Orchestra in 1989.
