Walter Susskind may be largely forgotten today, but he was a well-respected conductor, with positions as music director of the Scottish Orchestra, the Victoria Symphony Orchestra in Melbourne, the Toronto Symphony Orchestra, the St. Louis Symphony, and, toward the end of his life, he was principal guest conductor in Cincinnati. Born in Prague, he fled on March 13,1939, two days before the German invasion, and made his way to Britain, becoming a naturalized British citizen after the war.

I failed to write a date on the cassette of our interview; it took place in Budapest sometime in the 1970s. The reason why I wanted to talk to Walter Susskind was the fact that he had made the very first gramophone records of Bartók's Cantata Profana, Duke Bluebeard's Castle (with Endre Koréh and Ilse Hollweg as soloists) and The Wooden Prince. How did it come about? I wanted to know.

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Walter Susskind (WS): Those records were made for Peter Bartók, the composer's son, who is, as you know, a recording engineer. At that time, in the 1950s, he lived in New York and many people who knew him also knew me. They suggested me as a possible conductor for those pieces. I was living mostly in London and he telephoned me there to ask if I was interested. I was indeed, and for many years, those records were the only ones on the market.