Alvaro Cassuto (1938-2026): In Memoriam.

Álvaro Cassuto began his career in 1959 as an avant-garde composer, and was the first Portuguese writer to adopt the twelve-tone system. Born in Porto in 1938, he was the son of Germans who took refuge from the Nazi regime in the homeland of their forefathers. He studied violin, piano and composition from an early age with leading masters such as Fernando Lopes-Graça, Pedro de Freitas Branco and Herbert von Karajan among others. In 1961 he made his debut as a conductor with the Porto Symphony Orchestra and embarked on a career that led him to be appointed deputy music director of the Portuguese National Radio Symphony Orchestra from 1970 to 1974 and elected its music director from 1975 to 1987. He also led the University of California Symphony Orchestra at Irvine from 1974 to 1979, the Rhode Island Philharmonic Orchestra from 1979 to 1985, and the National Orchestra of New York, with which he garnered wide critical acclaim, including from The New York Times, for its regular annual concert series in Carnegie Hall.

 

Having graduated from law school in Lisbon in 1964, he obtained the Kapellmeister degree with distinction in Vienna a year later, and in 1969 was awarded the Koussevitzky Prize for a conductor of great merit at Tanglewood by Erich Leinsdorf.

 

Although he was regularly invited to conduct first-rate orchestras such as the Royal Philharmonic, the London Symphony, the London Philharmonic, the BBC Philharmonic, the Philadelphia Orchestra, the Berlin Symphony, the St Petersburg and Moscow orchestras among others, it was with orchestras that were receptive to an ‘orchestra builder’ that he developed the major part of his career.

 

Throughout his career he always took advantage of the opportunity to promote the orchestral music of Portuguese composers, also, with a variety of international orchestras, producing numerous recordings of these works for Naxos that were met with enthusiastic critical reviews.

Naxos Records.