(b Danzig, 3 July 1880; d Corseaux-sur-Vevey, 7 Jan 1967). German conductor and composer. Born into a family of organ builders, he learnt the piano and the violin at home before studying composition with Humperdinck and the piano with E. Rudorff at the Berlin Hochschule für Musik (1901–3) and with Reger in Leipzig. He worked as a répétiteur and Kappelmeister in regional theatres (Mainz, Zwickau, Dortmund, Bad Kreuznach and Goslar) before becoming chief conductor at Wiesbaden when he was 31. He conducted much contemporary music (especially Debussy, Delius, Ravel, Schoenberg and Stravinsky), worked as a guest conductor in Europe (conducting, for instance, the choir of the Berlin PO) and first appeared in the USA in 1927; but his reputation was essentially built at Wiesbaden, where he made 37 recordings. From 1937 to 1944 he was principal guest conductor of the Frankfurt RSO, and in 1942 he became chief conductor of the Dresden PO; but because of his Jewish wife the Nazis made his life difficult, and he resettled in Switzerland in 1944. He conducted at the reopening of the Salzburg Festival in 1946 and returned to guest conducting, taking the Vienna PO (with André Cluytens) on its first US tour in 1956. He recorded the complete Beethoven symphonies (1957–8), and continued to conduct the BBC SO, the LSO, the Stuttgart RSO and the NDR SO in Hamburg.
Schuricht gradually came to focus on the German Romantic repertory, with interpretations which were less strikingly individual than those of Furtwängler, Klemperer or Walter, but still in the 19th-century German tradition of expressive phrasing and liberal use of rubato. His own compositions include orchestral music, piano pieces and songs. (B. Gavoty and R. Hauert: Carl Schuricht, Geneva, 1954; Eng. trans. 1956)
JOSÉ BOWEN