Hidemaro Konoye (1898-1973) was a Japanese conductor and composer, and one of the first Japanese conductors to build a significant international profile.

In the Pristine catalogue he appears in his complete Berlin Philharmonic recordings from 1937 and 1938, including Haydn, Mozart and Mussorgsky.

Konoye’s recordings are historically valuable as documents of a Japanese conductor working with one of Europe’s leading orchestras before the Second World War.

His page is justified by the specificity and importance of the release. Konoye brings a rare pre-war international thread into the Berlin Philharmonic shelf.