Calle del Maestro Lassalle

The “maestro” who gives the street its name was José Lassalle, born in Madrid in 1874 and dead in the same city in 1932. Before taking up the baton he earned a doctorate in philology, taught Arabic in Granada, and worked as a music critic, until music took him to Munich. There he studied with masters such as Max Reger and knew Gustav Mahler closely, whose work he would champion for the rest of his life. His was the career of a Spaniard moving around Europe when that was still rare. He made his conducting debut in Munich in 1903 and in 1907 founded the Barcelona Philharmonic. He then worked in the Russian Empire, which he left around 1918 alongside the singer María Kuznetsova, to whom he was married. Later he settled in Madrid, where in 1920 he founded his own orchestra, largely devoted to new Spanish music. In December 1928 he conducted the Madrid premiere of Mahler’s First Symphony at the Palacio de la Música. He died four years later at his home on the calle de Valenzuela, beside the Retiro.