Sergiu Celibidache was a Romanian conductor, composer, musical theorist, and teacher. Educated in his native Romania, and later in Paris and Berlin, Celibidache's career in music spanned over five decades, including tenures as principal conductor of the Munich Philharmonic, the Berlin Philharmonic, the RAI National Symphony Orchestra, the Orchestre de Radio France, the Swedish Radio Symphony Orchestra and many other European orchestras such as the Stuttgart Radio Symphony Orchestra, the Danish National Symphony Orchestra or the London Symphony Orchestra.
Considering teaching as one of the most important activities, he taught music and musical phenomelogy at the Accademia Musicale Chigiana in Siena, Italy as well as at Mainz University in Germany, at the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, at the Schleswig-Holstein Musik Festival in Germany and towards the end at the Schola Cantorum in Paris.
Celibidache categorically refused to release his performances on commercial recordings during his lifetime, claiming that a listener could not have a "transcendental experience" outside the concert hall.