Guido Cantelli (April 27, 1920 – November 24, 1956) was a promising Italian orchestral conductor whose career was tragically cut short by his death at the age of 36 in an airplane crash in Paris, France. In the course of his brief career, he had conducted not only in many of the most famous houses of Europe but also in the United States and South Africa as well.
Arturo Toscanini was particularly impressed by him, and he wrote in a note to Cantelli's wife Iris in 1950, after four concerts of Cantelli as guest conductor with the NBC Symphony Orchestra:
I am happy and moved to inform you of Guido's great success and that I introduced him to my orchestra, which loves him as I do. This is the first time in my long career that I have met a young man so gifted. He will go far, very far.[1]
Toscanini, who died in 1957, was never told of Cantelli's death.
Cantelli left a small but valuable legacy of recordings.
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