1. Klaus Tennstedt worked with the Swedish Radio Symphony Orchestra, the NDR Symphony Orchestra, and other highly regarded ensembles such as the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra, and most notably the London Philharmonic Orchestra, with which he was closely associated and recorded many of his celebrated recordings under the EMI label, including a cycle of Mahler's 10 symphonies.
Klaus Tennstedt studied violin and piano at the Leipzig Conservatory.
Klaus Tennstedt avoided military service during the Nazi era by joining a Baroque orchestra.
Klaus Tennstedt became concertmaster of the Halle Municipal Theater orchestra in 1948, but a finger injury ended his career as a violinist and he continued as a voice coach at the same theater.
Klaus Tennstedt emigrated from East Germany in 1971, obtaining asylum in Sweden.
Klaus Tennstedt conducted in Gothenburg at the Goteborg Theater, and in Stockholm with the Swedish Radio Symphony Orchestra.
In 1974, Klaus Tennstedt made his North American debut with the Toronto Symphony Orchestra.
Klaus Tennstedt's only American opera engagement was a series of seven performances of Beethoven's Fidelio at the Metropolitan Opera, the last of which, on January 7,1984, was broadcast.
Klaus Tennstedt then guest-conducted the Philadelphia Orchestra, the Chicago Symphony, the Cincinnati Symphony, the Cleveland Orchestra, the Detroit Symphony, the Los Angeles Philharmonic and the New York Philharmonic.
Klaus Tennstedt died of throat cancer in January 1998, at his home in Kiel, Germany.
In 1978 Klaus Tennstedt became the first German conductor of his generation to conduct the Israel Philharmonic, which until then had boycotted German conductors because of their connections with the Nazi regime.
Klaus Tennstedt's recordings include a complete cycle of the symphonies of Gustav Mahler, and several of Tennstedt's concert performances have been reissued on CD.