Eighty-year-old Riccardo Muti extended his contract to conduct the Chicago Symphony to 2023 (Chicago Tribune, Sept. 23, 2021). Pablo Casals, Nadia Boulanger, Arturo Toscanini, Arthur Rubinstein, Mehli Mehta, and Paul Paray all conducted major orchestras into their nineties, and Walter Demrosch, Arthur Fiedler, Serge Kousevitsky, Leopold Stokowski, Sir Thomas Beecham, and Eugene Ormandy conducted into their eighties.
At age 99, Edward Simons conducted an orchestra in suburban New York to break the world record for oldest conductor of a major orchestra that had been held by Spain’s Juan Garcés Queralt. Simons died in 2018 at age 101.
