Lukas Foss

Lukas Foss (August 15, 1922 – February 1, 2009) was a German-American composer, pianist, and conductor. Career Born Lukas Fuchs in Berlin, Germany, in 1922, Foss was soon recognized as a child prodigy. He began piano and theory lessons with Julius Goldstein Herford in Berlin at the age of six. His parents were Hilde (Schindler) and the philosopher and scholar, Martin Foss. In 1933, when Adolf Hitler came to power, the Jewish family moved from Germany to Paris, where Lukas studied piano with Lazare Lévy, composition with Noël Gallon, orchestration with Felix Wolfes, and the flute with Marcel Moyse. In 1937 he moved with his parents and brother to the United States, where his father (on advice from the Quakers, who had taken the family in upon arrival in Philadelphia) changed the family name to Foss. He studied at the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia, with Isabelle Vengerova (piano), Rosario Scalero (composition) and Fritz Reiner (conducting). At Curtis, Foss began a lifelong friendship with classmate Leonard Bernstein, who later described Foss as an “authentic genius.” In 1961 Bernstein conducted the premiere of Foss’s Time Cycle, while Foss would conduct the premiere of Be