Walter Hendl, at 90; former director of famed Eastman school of music

ROCHESTER, N.Y. -- Walter Hendl, former director of the Eastman School of Music and a conductor, died Tuesday at his home in Erie, Pa., school officials confirmed. He was 90 years old and had heart and lung disease.

Mr. Hendl headed the Eastman School in Rochester from 1964 to 1972, but school historian Vince Lenti, a former colleague, said Mr. Hendl's great talent was conducting. "He was not a true academician, but he had a lot of really solid accomplishments here," Lenti said.

Mr. Hendl launched Eastman's FM radio concerts, sent the Eastman Wind Ensemble and Jazz Ensemble on far-flung tours, and organized the school's 50th anniversary festival in 1971-72.

Martin Bliley, a musician who studied with Mr. Hendl, said he had a guiding hand in Eastman's electronic, contemporary, and Suzuki music programs. He hired top faculty including violinist Zvi Zeitlin and the violin-piano team Carol Glenn and Eugene List.

Mr. Hendl was born Jan. 12, 1917, in West New York, N.J. He won the New Jersey State Piano Competition in 1936 and entered the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia the next year. His major professional breakthrough came in 1941, when the maestro Serge Koussevitsky trained him as a conductor at the Tanglewood Music Festival in Lenox, Mass.

Mr. Hendl joined the New York Philharmonic, where he became assistant conductor in 1945. He went to the Dallas Symphony Orchestra as music director in 1949, touring extensively and premiering works by composers including Czech master Bohuslav Martinu, Brazilian innovator Heitor Villa-Lobos, and American musician Virgil Thomson.

After leaving Eastman, he joined the conducting faculty of the Juilliard School in Manhattan.