Ernest Fleischmann

Ernest Martin Fleischmann (December 7, 1924 – June 13, 2010) was a German-born American impresario who served for 30 years as executive director of the Los Angeles Philharmonic, which he upgraded to become a top-ranked orchestra. A talented musician, he chose a career on the business aspect of music, rather than a life as a conductor.

Fleischmann was born in Frankfurt am Main on December 7, 1924, to Gustav and Toni (née Koch). His Jewish family fled Nazi Germany and emigrated to South Africa. There he learned music as a teenager and made his debut as a professional conductor in 1942, when he was only 17 years old. In London, he arranged for the orchestra to perform an annual season at Carnegie Hall in New York City and commissioned works by Richard Rodney Bennett and Sir Arthur Bliss, in addition to exchange concerts with the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra. Fleischmann brought in Finn Esa-Pekka Salonen in 1992, who The Wall Street Journal credited with transforming the orchestra into a "lean, disciplined machine". Venezuelan Gustavo Dudamel was hired in 2009 to succeed Salonen. Reviewer Mark Swed of the Los Angeles Times credited Fleischmann with having "transformed a provincial second-rank orchestra into one of the world's best".

Described by The New York Times as "a taskmaster and an office tyrant", Fleischmann was once described by an employee as "egocentric, completely unprincipled and yet incredibly brilliant monomaniac in music". Fleischmann also had a long-standing feud with Los Angeles Times music critic Martin Bernheimer, whose backbiting criticism had a negative effect on morale in the orchestra. Bernheimer, who won a Pulitzer Prize for Criticism in 1982, called Fleischmann "ruthless, a manipulator, and very smart and very progressive".

Fleischmann died at age 85 on June 13, 2010, in Los Angeles. He was survived by two daughters and a son.