Leinsdorf's recordings, made over 50 years with orchestras from Rochester to London, included opera and symphonic repertoire. They leave a legacy of musical rectitude rather than heartfelt emotion or sensual excitement.
His career, from the time he left the Metropolitan Opera in 1942, included one year as music director of the Cleveland Orchestra, nine years with the Rochester Philharmonic, part of a year as head of the New York City Opera, and, finally, after many years of guesting and psychiatric analysis, a seven- year term with the Boston Symphony.
After he left Boston in 1969, he settled into a career as senior guest conductor, which seemed to suit his temperament and the patience of the players. He also found time to assume the role of musical conscience in deftly written books that scolded other conductors as well as soloists and arts managers.
Despite the mobility of his career, Leinsdorf left a recording legacy that rivaled those of conductors with long associations with their orchestras. He recorded with the Los Angeles Philharmonic, the Rome Opera, the RCA Italiana Orchestra, the Boston Symphony, the Rochester Philharmonic, the Philadelphia Orchestra, the London Symphony, the Philharmonia, the Chicago Symphony, and two pickup orchestras, the Philharmonic Symphony of London and the Concert Arts Orchestra.
His term in Boston resulted in recordings of Beethoven symphonies and piano concertos plus works of Schumann, Tchaikovsky, Dvorak, Smetana, Stravinsky and Strauss. His operatic recordings centered on Puccini and Verdi, rather than the Strauss and Wagner with which he was often associated. In Boston, he sought to correct that with what became an ill-fated recording of Lohengrin.
