Miltiades Caridis
Caridis was born in Danzig (today Gdansk) in 1923, from a German mother and a Greek father. He was brought up and went to school in Dresden. His father was a successful merchant there, but sensing that war was imminent he moved his family to Greece, in 1938. Although the war followed the Caridis family to Greece, this was an exceptionally wise decision : by 1946 Miltiades was the only survivor from his school class in Dresden.
During the war he studied music in Athens, in Kalomiris' National Conservatory with E. Pana (piano) and T.Vavayannis (theory). He concluded his studies after the War, at the Vienna Music Academy, with Professor Hans Swarowsky, where he received his degree in conducting. His career was based in central Europe but he visited Greece often.
He started his career at the opera houses of Köln and Graz and conducted at the Vienna Staatsoper for seven years. Between 1960 and 1967 he was principal conductor of the Philharmonia Hungarica with which he toured and made repeated visits to Athens.
He spent some years of his career freelancing conducting in total 129 different orchestras and 80 different choirs around the world as far as Japan or Argentina also participating in all the major festivals. He served as principal conductor of the Oslo Philharmonic (1969-71), Duisburg (1975-81), Tonkünstler (1979-85) and Greek Radio (1995 to his death in 1977)
He was a member of the board of many international competitions. He was awarded the Bella Bartok Medal in 1981 for his contribution to the dissemination of Bartok's work and was honoured by the Athens Academy for his overall contribution to music in 1991.