Born in France to American parents (his father was an actor), Lorin Maazel was brought up and educated in America. When he was four years old he was discovered to possess perfect pitch and a photographic memory, and the following year he began to study the violin and piano. Two years later he started to study conducting, with Vladimir Bakaleinikoff in Pittsburgh, and appeared publicly for the first time in 1938, leading a university orchestra: by the next year he was conducting the Interlochen Orchestra at the New York World’s Fair, and the Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestra, sharing a programme with Leopold Stokowski who dubbed him ‘the prodigy of the century’. Two years later he was invited by Toscanini to conduct the NBC Symphony Orchestra. Maazel mad...