When Marin met Sylvia: two trailblazing conductors collide

Two conductors, born a generation apart, compare notes on their lives in music and breaking down barriers for female musicians.

Sylvia Caduff, born in 1937, was Leonard Bernstein's assistant at the New York Philharmonic and was mentored by Herbert von Karajan. She became one of the first women to conduct the New York Philharmonic, the Berlin Philharmonic and the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra in the 1960s, when it was virtually unheard of for a woman to conduct a top orchestra.

The American conductor Marin Alsop was also mentored by Leonard Bernstein and a generation later has broken further new ground for women in conducting - becoming the first female conductor of the last night of the Proms, and with the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra the first to hold a music director post of an American orchestra.

Photo © Amalie R. Rothschild