Alfred Szendrei

Alfred Szendrei (29 February 1884 – 3 March 1976), also Alfred Sendrey and Aladár Szendrei, was an American musicologist, organist, conductor, and composer of Hungarian origin. He was one of the leading conductors and pioneers of German radio. In exile he changed his Hungarian surname “Szendrei” to the Americanized spelling “Sendrey”. Life and career Szendrei was born in 1884 to a Hungarian middle-class family in Budapest (Austria-Hungary); his father was a civil servant. From the age of six he learned to play the piano. At the request of his parents, he first studied jurisprudence at the Corvinus University of Budapest. From 1931 to 1933 he was music director of the Berliner Rundfunk and teacher at the Klindworth-Scharwenka Conservatory in Berlin. After his emigration to France, he worked from 1933 to 1940 as program director at Radiodiffusion nationale in Paris. When the Germans attacked France in May and June 1939, he fled to the United States. There he changed his name to “Sendrey”. He first worked as a translator for the United States Department of State. Later he was invited by Abraham Binder to the Jewish community center 92nd Street YMHA in New York City. From 1944 to 1952