Sandor Salgo

Who was Sandor Salgo?

Sandor Salgo was a Hungarian-born Jewish composer, conductor, and violist who emigrated to America in 1937.

Born into a Jewish family in Budapest, Hungary in 1909, Sandor Salgo studied music in Budapest. A clear standout, his early career was affected by the prewar antisemitism then prevalent in Hungary. In 1937, Sandor Salgo and a string quartet would serenade the bed-ridden wife of the American Ambassador to Hungary. America's walls were closed to immigrants, but the Ambassador refused to leave Mr. Salgo behind and he was afforded a special visa to America in 1937.

While Salgo returned to Europe later in his life, he refused ever to visit Hungary or even speak Hungarian, because of the repressive government during his youth, the antisemitism, and in the Nazi years, the holocaust. In 1939 Sandor Salgo taught at the Westminster Choir College in Princeton, New Jersey. It was during this time at Princeton that Albert Einstein attended one of Mr. Salgo's concerts. He sent him a letter of appreciation saying, "Mr. Sandor Salgo is a musician of high standing. The concert he gave ... has made a deep impression on me," the two played occasionally in a quartet together.