Conductor and composer had strong L.A. ties

Gerhard Samuel, a German-born composer and conductor who became prominent in classical music circles in San Francisco and Los Angeles in the 1960s and ‘70s, died March 25. He was 83.

Samuel died of cardiac arrest at his Seattle home, his partner, Achim Nicklis, said.

Samuel first attracted attention as music director of the Oakland Symphony from 1959 to 1970.

“He built up the Oakland Symphony from a position of modest provincialism to one of international respect,” critic Martin Bernheimer wrote of Samuel in a 1970 profile for The Times.

Under Samuel’s direction, the orchestra’s concert programs were a mix of “fascinating exhumations” of overlooked works and “experimental pieces both conservative and way out,” Bernheimer wrote.

Samuel was also music director of the San Francisco Ballet for 10 years and the first music director of the Cabrillo Festival of Contemporary Music in Aptos, Calif., in the early 1960s. The festival is now held in Santa Cruz.

He was named associate conductor of the Los Angeles Philharmonic in 1970 when Zubin Mehta was its music director. Samuel showed his range of interests with one of his first concerts in that position: The program combined Gyorgy Ligeti’s new “Lontano” with Bela Bartok’s “The Miraculous Mandarin” suite, composed in the 1920s.

Samuel’s passion for contemporary music traced back to his student years.

He studied violin and conducting at the Eastman School of Music in Rochester, N.Y., graduating in 1945.

He earned a master’s degree in music at Yale University, where he studied composition with composer Paul Hindemith.

Samuel also studied in the late 1940s at Tanglewood, the summer music festival in Massachusetts, with Serge Koussevitzky, then the conductor of the Boston Symphony Orchestra and a champion of modern music.

Though Samuel was best known for his conducting, he composed a number of works for ballet, orchestra, chamber ensembles and vocalists.

His music was expressive, vivid, “elegant and graceful,” according to a 1989 review of the premiere of Samuel’s “Apollo and Hyacinth” in Los Angeles.

Many of his compositions were performed by the Los Angeles Philharmonic, starting with “Looking at Orpheus Looking” in 1971.

While in Los Angeles, Samuel taught music at the California Institute of the Arts in Valencia for four years starting in 1972.

He moved to Cincinnati in 1976 to become music director of the Philharmonia Orchestra and director of the Cincinnati Chamber Orchestra. He retired in 1997.

Samuel was born April 20, 1924, in Bonn, Germany, and immigrated to New York City with his family in 1939 to escape the Nazi regime. Before heading to California he spent 10 years as a violinist and associate conductor with the Minneapolis Symphony Orchestra.

Along with his partner, Samuel is survived by his sister, Erica Wilhelm, two nephews and several cousins.

--

mary.rourke@latimes.com