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Soon after he arrived in California, Bruno Walter opened the Los Angeles Philharmonic's season with five concerts. It marked his return to conducting since the death of his daughter Gretel. Over the next few years, he would travel back and forth across the United States, stopping in the middle of the country in places like Kansas City to thrill audiences that had not heard him before. He also agreed to give a benefit recital with Lotte Lehmann for the French and American Red Cross, but the Nazis captured France before the money could even be donated. Walter sought refuge once again in his work as a conductor in America, performing with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, the Los Angeles Philharmonic, the NBC Symphony Orchestra, the New York Philharmonic, the Detroit Symphony Orchestra, and the Philadelphia Orchestra, among others. In addition, he signed a contract with the Metropolitan Opera for a series of performances. With the end of World War II, Walter decided to return to Europe to conduct beginning in 1947.

It is not clear what had happened to Delia Reinhardt, a much-admired leading soprano at the Berlin State Opera from 1924 to 1937, during World War II, but an account based on the memories of her friends and acquaintances suggests that her career foundered due to Nazi politics. She then developed an interest in the teachings of Rudolf Steiner, the founder of anthroposophy. It was Reinhardt who kindled Bruno Walter's interest in Steiner's teachings, which would influence his own views on Christianity over the years. This chapter focuses on Walter's conducting activities between 1949 and 1956 that took him to Los Angeles, New York, and Europe. His performances include a rare collaboration with Leon Fleisher, supported by the Standard Symphony Orchestra, and concerts with the New York Philharmonic, the Berlin Philharmonic, the Metropolitan Opera, the NBC Symphony Orchestra, and the Musikalische Akademie.

On March 7, 1957, Bruno Walter suffered a heart attack, forcing him to cancel his remaining performances for the year and to restrict his musical activities to concerts and recordings. He conducted only a handful of concerts in 1958, the first of which took place on February 26 with the New York Philharmonic. In the middle of March, however, he gave two performances of Franz Schubert's “Unfinished” and Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart's Requiem in Chicago. He also performed Anton Bruckner's “Romantic” in Los Angeles and San Francisco in April and May. In 1959, his public appearances were limited to three events, including a program for the Los Angeles Philharmonic and his farewell to the Metropolitan Opera. During the 1959–1960 season, he conducted in the first Mahler Festival given by the New York Philharmonic. In February 1960, he made his first commercial recording of Bruckner's Fourth with the Columbia Symphony Orchestra. The year 1960 also witnessed his very last public performance. Walter died on the morning of February 17, 1962.

Born on September 15, 1876, to Joseph and Johanna Schlesinger (née Fernbach) in Berlin, Germany, Bruno Walter displayed prodigious musical talent at an early age. At the age of eight, he entered the Stern Conservatory, where he became known as “the little Mozart.” After a year, Bruno decided to try his hand at composition. As a twelve-year-old, he appeared destined for a career as a concert pianist and a budding composer. He was also an accomplished vocal accompanist. However, Bruno decided to pursue a conducting career after he saw Hans von Bülow direct an orchestra, and he soon developed a strong interest in Richard Wagner's operas. Walter also became friends with Gustav Mahler, whose conducting would have an even greater effect on him than his discoveries of Wagner and Bülow. He made his conducting debut at the Cologne Opera with Albert Lortzing's Der Waffenschmied in 1894. In 1896, he was appointed Kapellmeister of the Breslau Stadttheater (municipal opera) in Breslau, but not after he changed his last name from Schlesinger.

In February 1947, Bruno Walter was appointed musical adviser of the New York Philharmonic after Artur Rodzinski resigned as musical director. Walter soon began planning his conducting activities for the 1947–1948 season, with the assistance of his friend Wolfgang Stresemann, a composer and an aspiring conductor. His conducting activities included Daniel Gregory Mason's Symphony no. 2, as well as Hollywood Bowl concerts featuring Richard Wagner, Johannes Brahms, Antonin Dvořák, Claude Debussy, and others. Beginning in 1947, he made numerous return visits to Europe, performing in cities such as Salzburg, Vienna, and Munich. A reunion with the Concertgebouw Orchestra produced a concert for Richard Strauss's Don Juan. He traveled back to New York on January 22, 1948, to give the New York Philharmonic premiere of Strauss's Metamorphosen. Walter went back to London for several more concerts, including an account of Ludwig van Beethoven's Ninth with the London Philharmonic Orchestra. Walter canceled his European engagements for the 1948–1949 season, but still had a remarkably busy schedule.

As music director of the Gewandhaus Orchestra of Leipzig, Bruno Walter conducted numerous concerts not only in Germany but also in other cities such as Amsterdam, Paris, New York, and London. Many players wrote to Walter after World War I, especially the music devotees who had experienced his conducting. In his new role as Gewandhauskapellmeister, Walter conducted his first concert in October 1929. In his first season with the Gewandhaus, he conducted ten of the regularly scheduled nineteen concerts (and two additional concerts). In early 1930, he conducted Johann Strauss's opera Die Fledermaus in Amsterdam. During the 1931–1932 season, he made a successful return trip to New York by conducting the New York Philharmonic before heading back to Leipzig and Berlin for another round of concerts. Walter abruptly left Leipzig due to pressure from the Nazis, settling in Austria with his family.

In 1915, Bruno Walter met the lyric soprano Delia Reinhardt when two staples of German opera, Die Zauberflöte and Der Freischütz, were given under him. Walter developed a deep affection for Reinhardt during his years in Munich. On March 28, Walter gave a double bill at the Hoftheater: Erich Wolfgang Korngold's Violanta and Der Ring des Polykrates. Although Johann Sebastian Bach's Matthäus-Passion was absent from his concerts in 1916, Walter did not neglect oratorios that year. He revived Robert Schumann's Das Paradies und die Peri in mid-March and presented George Frideric Handel's Samson in November. In 1917 Walter gave more premieres with the Musikalische Akademie. In 1918 three orchestral songs by Walter Braunfels—“An die Parzen,” “Auf ein Soldatengrab,” “Der Tod fürs Vaterland”—were performed for the first time under Walter. He gave Franz Schreker's Die Gezeichneten in 1919 and premiered Arnold Schoenberg's Gurre-Lieder the following year. A light opera by Paul Graener, Schirin und Gertraude, premiered in 1921, while Handel's Acis and Galatea was presented in 1922.

In 1925, Bruno Walter became musical director of the Städtische Oper in Berlin, where he also began a long association with the Salzburg Festival. In the 1920s, Berlin had a number of great conductors including Wilhelm Furtwängler, Otto Klemperer, Erich Kleiber, and Walter. The last phase of Walter's operatic career in Germany commenced on September 18, 1925, when he conducted a performance of Richard Wagner's Meistersinger. Although Walter's work in the opera house kept him busy, he also had a series of concerts with the Berlin Philharmonic even as he continued his exhausting travels to cities such as London and Milan. Walter's final opera during his tenure at the Städtische Oper was Fidelio, which he conducted on April 14, 1929. That same year, he left Berlin for Leipzig to succeed Furtwängler as music director of the Gewandhaus Orchestra.

In 1901, Bruno Walter accepted Gustav Mahler's invitation to be his assistant at the Court Opera in Vienna. Shortly before Walter arrived in the fall of 1901, Richard Strauss had given the Viennese premiere of Ein Heldenleben while Mahler had the belated world premiere of his cantata Das klagende Lied. That same year saw the young tenor Leo Slezak join the opera company at the Vienna Hofoper. The racy plays of Arthur Schnitzler and the writings of Oscar Wilde appealed to many Austrians. On May 2, 1901, a few months before arriving in the capital of Austria, Walter and Elsa Korneck were married in Berlin. But Walter had to wait for the emperor's permission before he could work at the Vienna Hofoper, and soon he was conducting countless operas for the company. Walter's often had an uneasy relationship with Strauss, more so with Arnold Schoenberg.

The year 1956 marked Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart's 200th birthday and was celebrated with a deluge of fetes and performances dedicated to him. Bruno Walter, who also turned eighty that year, conducted several concerts at the New York Philharmonic for a Mozart Festival in March. He also became preoccupied in late February and March with a performance of Mozart's Die Zauberflöte at the Metropolitan Opera. In 1957, he published a book entitled Von der Musik und vom Musizieren, translated to Of Music and Music-Making two years later. He conducted a few concerts of standard repertoire with the Los Angeles Philharmonic—at the Hollywood Bowl in August and at Philharmonic Auditorium in November. Walter contemplated on ending his regular guest appearances with the New York Philharmonic after the 1956–1957 season. One of his friends, Arturo Toscanini, died on January 16, 1957. By March, Walter was conducting the first performance of Die Zauberflöte for the 1956–1957 season.

When he was expelled from Germany in 1933, Bruno Walter and his family moved to Vienna, which would become his main center of activity for the next several years. The day after he arrived in Vienna, Walter received a telephone call from Rudolf Mengelberg, who asked him to conduct several concerts with the Concertgebouw Orchestra in Amsterdam. For Walter, conducting the Concertgebouw was a welcome respite. He would take a number of lengthy trips in the next five years in order to continue conducting throughout Europe without crossing into German territory. He also conducted the Vienna Philharmonic on a regular basis and became a hero of the Salzburg Festival. The year 1933 was a tumultuous period for Walter personally, but saw him being more in command than ever before from a musical standpoint. In June 1936, however, Walter's musical serenity was disrupted when some Austrian Nazis threw stink bombs during one of his Viennese performances of Richard Wagner's Tristan und Isolde.

In 1911, Bruno Walter had to endure the death of his friend Gustav Mahler. He became director of the Vienna Singakademie, a position held by Johannes Brahms almost five decades before. He would also be drawn away from the Vienna Hofoper to other non-theatrical events. In February he had his first engagement in Rome, conducting the Orchestra of the Society of Santa Cecilia at the Augusteum in a concert of Hector Berlioz's Symphonie fantastique, Richard Strauss's Don Quixote, and Karl Goldmark's “Sakuntala” Overture. Walter also became preoccupied with the preparation for George Frideric Handel's Messiah in German. In the spring of 1911, two operatic premieres stood out: Strauss's Der Rosenkavalier and Claude Debussy's Pelléas et Mélisande. Walter led the first performance of Mahler's Das Lied von der Erde in Munich in 1911 as well as his Ninth Symphony in Vienna the following year. At the end of March Walter returned to Rome to conduct two concerts at the Augusteum.

In 1913, Bruno Walter became the Royal Bavarian Music Director and General Music Director of the Bavarian State Opera in Munich. Although Walter's conducting duties did not end with opera, most of his work revolved around the perennial favorites of the opera house. He conducted Richard Wagner's Tristan und Isolde on January 4 and was in Vienna three days later for rehearsals with the Singakademie. Back in Munich, he gave performances of Richard Strauss's Der Rosenkavalier and Giuseppe Verdi's Il trovatore in the Hoftheater. In March, Walter gave the first complete Ring cycle as Generalmusikdirektor. He presented the most ambitious program of his first year as director of the Musikalische Akademie in November and again traveled to his native city for his first engagement as guest conductor of the Berlin Philharmonic in December.

On September 15, 1936, Bruno Walter celebrated his sixtieth birthday as an established conductor in Vienna. As a resident of Vienna, he conducted at the Vienna Opera and in concerts with the Vienna Philharmonic. He also wrote a biographical essay on Gustav Mahler, published that year. Aside from Mahler, Walter had to endure the loss of another friend, Ossip Gabrilowitsch, in 1936. Immediately after his season in Vienna opened, he traveled to Sweden and then to Amsterdam for an entire month. He returned to Vienna in the middle of November 1936 and became firmly entrenched in Vienna's musical life. The high point of December was a new production of Giuseppe Verdi's Don Carlo. In February and March 1937 Walter returned once more to Amsterdam for a concert production of Carl Maria von Weber's opera Euryanthe with the Concertgebouw Orchestra. In August 1939, Walter's daughter Gretel was murdered in Berlin by her husband.

In 1923, Bruno Walter sailed to America for the first time and had engagements in New York, Detroit, Minneapolis, and Boston. On February 15, 1923, Walter had his first concert in New York, when he conducted Walter Damrosch's New York Symphony Orchestra at Carnegie Hall. Three days later, his next program with the Symphony Orchestra took place at the now defunct Aeolian Concert Hall on 42nd Street. After his New York concerts, Walter traveled to Detroit to give concerts later in February. On March 30, he gave his first concert in Boston's Symphony Hall, conducting the Boston Symphony Orchestra in a program that included Ludwig van Beethoven's Piano Concerto no. 4. He then returned to Europe, with engagements in the Netherlands, Italy, Rumania, Hungary, and Denmark, as well as Germany and Austria. In 1924 he went back to America, conducting eight programs with the Symphony Society in Manhattan, among other engagements. The following year, he returned to Berlin.

When he arrived in Breslau, Bruno Walter not only found the town extremely dull but also witnessed what seemed to be the indolence, indifference, and general laziness of the singers and directors of the Breslau Stadttheater. The musicians appeared to be more interested in making cynical jokes than in rehearsing or improving their craft, while the theater's director, Theodor Löwe, favored the staging more than the musical aspects of opera and virtually ignored Walter. In 1897, Walter became chief conductor at the municipal opera in Pressburg, and the following year took the position of chief conductor of the Riga Opera in Latvia. Before he could work in Riga, however, Walter had to agree to another major change in his life: he converted to Christianity, probably Catholicism. He returned to Berlin in 1900 and assumed the post of Royal Prussian Conductor at the Staatsoper Unter den Linden, succeeding Franz Schalk. It was in Riga where Walter met Elsa Korneck, a lyric-dramatic soprano of the Riga Opera and his future wife.

On January 2, 1908, Bruno Walter conducted the world premiere of Karl Goldmark's opera Ein Wintermärchen. In April he gave the premiere of Julius Bittner's Die rote Gred, the composer's first staged opera, at the Vienna Hofoper. In May he traveled to Prague to conduct Giuseppe Verdi's Ballo. Back in Vienna, he gave the Viennese premiere of Xavier Leroux's Le Chemineau in mid-January and performed his First Symphony in D Minor in February in the Grosser Musiksaal. In 1910 he conducted Tristan und Isolde and Ethel Smyth's The Wreckers at Covent Garden in London. In late October, he directed two performances of Gustav Mahler's Third Symphony with the Konzertverein Orchestra. The two performances of Mahler's Third marked another milestone in his conducting career. Upon his return to Vienna, he became preoccupied with preparations for the new two-act opera by Julius Bittner, Der Musikant. In 1910, he helped Mahler select and coach solo singers for the premiere of the latter's Symphony No. 8.

This chapter focuses on the new Transfiguration CD performed by the Smithsonian Chamber Players and conducted by the cellist Kenneth Slowik. Slowik supplements his own performance of the slow movement from Mahler's Fifth Symphony with an excerpt from Willem Mengelberg's 1926 Concertgebouw recording along with another one performed by Bruno Walter and the Vienna Philharmonic. He has also reprinted a few lines of incontestably hideous doggerel that Mengelberg inscribed in his conducting score for the Adagietto. The chapter also criticises his performance of Mahler's 1898 string-orchestra arrangement of Beethoven's Quartet in F minor in the CD by calling it a bloated “modern” reading which fails to convey the expressive content of the music.

On October 16, 1933, Arnold Schoenberg wrote to Alban Berg in which he issued his most substantial statement on Jewish politics. He outlined a plan to organize assistance for the German Jews and talked about Zionism and democracy as part of his “A Four-Point Program for Jewry,” completed in 1938. This chapter looks at Schoenberg's emigration from Germany to the United States, where he spent time in Boston and New York before settling in Los Angeles, focusing on the period 1933–1943. It also looks at his views on program music, tonality and atonality, modernism, conservatism in the arts, the Fourth String Quartet, Op. 37, sacred music and tradition, World War II, and composers and music history. In addition, the chapter includes a letter to Hanns Eisler dated August 20, 1934, regarding a proposed music institute in Russia, and another letter to Bruno Walter dated December 23, 1943, in response to the former's request for permission to make a substantial cut in the string sextet Transfigured Night.