Otto Klemperer
By 1931 the political situation had changed and the Kroll Opera was shut down. By 1933 the Nazis had gained power and Klemperer left Germany and went to the United States where he took U.S. nationality. He became conductor of the Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestra (1933-39) and also conducted the New York Philharmonic Orchestra, the Philadelphia Orchestra and the Pittsburg Orchestra. However he was not happy in the United States where the musical culture and music critics were largely out of sympathy with his Weimar modernism and he felt he was not properly valued. He hoped for a permanent position as lead conductor in New York or Philadelphia. But in 1936 he was passed over in both - first in Philadelphia, where Eugene Ormandy succeeded Stokowski at the Philadelphia Orchestra, and then in New York, where Toscanini's departure left a vacancy at the New York Philharmonic but John Barbirolli and Artur Rodzinski were engaged in preference to Klemperer. The New York decision was particularly galling, as Klemperer had been engaged to conduct the first fourteen weeks of the New York Philharmonic's 1935-6 season. Klemperer's bitterness at this decision was voiced in a letter he wrote to Arthur Judson, who ran the orchestra: "that the society did not re-engage me is the strongest offense, the sharpest insult to me as artist, which I can imagine. You see, I am no youngster. I have a name and a good name. One could not use me in a most difficult season and then expel me. This non-reengagement will have very bad results not only for me in New York but in the whole world.... This non-reengagement is an absolutely unjustified wrong done to me by the Philharmonic Society."