New York, Paris, and Cincinnati In 1905 Stokowski began work in New York City as the organist and choir director of
St. Bartholomew's Church. He was very popular among the parishioners, who included members of the
Vanderbilt family, but in the course of time he resigned this position to pursue a career as an orchestra conductor. Stokowski moved to Paris for additional studies in conducting. There he heard that the
Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra would be needing a new conductor when it returned from a long sabbatical. In 1908 Stokowski began a campaign to win this position, writing letters to Mrs. Christian R. Holmes, the orchestra's president, and travelling to
Cincinnati, Ohio, for a personal interview. Stokowski was selected over other applicants and took up his conducting duties in late 1909. That was also the year of his official conducting debut in Paris with the
Colonne Orchestra, on 12 May 1909, when he accompanied his future wife, the pianist
Olga Samaroff, in
Tchaikovsky's
Piano Concerto No. 1. Stokowski's conducting debut in London took place the following week, on 18 May, with the
New Symphony Orchestra at the
Queen's Hall. His engagement as new permanent conductor in Cincinnati was a great success. He introduced the concept of "pops concerts" and, starting with his first season, he began championing the work of living composers. His concerts included performances of music by
Richard Strauss,
Sibelius,
Rachmaninoff,
Debussy,
Glazunov,
Saint-Saëns and many others. He conducted the American premieres of new works by such composers as
Elgar, whose
2nd Symphony was first presented there on 24 November 1911. He was to maintain his advocacy of contemporary music to the end of his career. However, in early 1912 Stokowski became frustrated with the policies of the orchestra's board of directors, and submitted his resignation. There was some dispute over whether to accept this or not, but on 12 April 1912 the board decided to do so.
Philadelphia Orchestra at 240 S. Broad St., Philadelphia Two months later, Stokowski was appointed the director of the
Philadelphia Orchestra, and he made his conducting debut in
Philadelphia on 11 October 1912. This position would bring him some of his greatest accomplishments and recognition. It has been suggested that Stokowski resigned abruptly at Cincinnati with the hidden knowledge that the conducting position in Philadelphia was his when he wanted it, or as
Oscar Levant suggested in his book
A Smattering of Ignorance, "he had the contract in his back pocket." Before Stokowski moved into his conducting position in Philadelphia, however, he returned to England to conduct two concerts at the
Queen's Hall in London. On 22 May 1912, Stokowski conducted the
London Symphony Orchestra in a concert that he was to repeat in its entirety 60 years later at the age of 90, and on 14 June 1912, he conducted an all-
Wagner concert that featured the noted soprano
Lillian Nordica. While he was director of the Philadelphia Orchestra, he was largely responsible for convincing
Mary Louise Curtis Bok to set up the
Curtis Institute of Music (13 October 1924) in Philadelphia. He helped with recruiting faculty and hired many of their graduates. Stokowski rapidly gained a reputation as a musical showman. His flair for the theatrical included grand gestures, such as throwing the sheet music on the floor to show he did not need to conduct from a score. He also experimented with new lighting arrangements in the concert hall, at one point conducting in a dark hall with only his head and hands lighted, at other times arranging the lights so they would cast theatrical shadows of his head and hands. Late in the 1929–1930 symphony season, Stokowski started conducting without a baton. His free-hand manner of conducting soon became one of his trademarks. On the musical side, Stokowski nurtured the orchestra and shaped the "Stokowski" sound, or what became known as the "Philadelphia Sound". He encouraged "
free bowing" from the string section, "free breathing" from the brass section, and continually altered the seating arrangements of the orchestra's sections, as well as the acoustics of the hall, in response to his urge to create a better sound. Stokowski is credited as the first conductor to adopt the seating plan that is used by most orchestras today, with first and second violins together on the conductor's left, and the violas and cellos to the right. 's
8th Symphony Stokowski also became known for modifying the
orchestrations of some of the works that he conducted, as was a standard practice for conductors prior to the second half of the 20th century. Among others, he amended the orchestrations of
Beethoven,
Tchaikovsky,
Sibelius,
Johann Sebastian Bach, and
Brahms. For example, Stokowski revised the ending of the
Romeo and Juliet Fantasy Overture, by Tchaikovsky, so it would close quietly, taking his notion from
Modest Tchaikovsky's
Life and Letters of Peter Ilych Tchaikovsky (translated by
Rosa Newmarch: 1906) that the composer had provided a quiet ending of his own at
Balakirev's suggestion. Stokowski made his own orchestration of
Mussorgsky's
Night on Bald Mountain by adapting
Rimsky-Korsakov's orchestration and making it sound, in some places, similar to Mussorgsky's original. In the film
Fantasia, to conform to the Disney artists' story-line, depicting the battle between good and evil, the ending of
Night on Bald Mountain segued into the beginning of
Schubert's
Ave Maria. Many music critics have taken exception to the liberties Stokowski took—liberties which were common in the nineteenth century, but had mostly died out in the twentieth, when faithful adherence to the composer's scores became more common.Stokowski's repertoire was broad and included many contemporary works. He was the only conductor to perform all of
Arnold Schoenberg's orchestral works during the composer's own lifetime, several of which were world premieres. Stokowski gave the first American performance of Schoenberg's
Gurre-Lieder in 1932. It was recorded "live" on 78 rpm records and remained the only recording of this work in the catalogue until the advent of the
LP Record. Stokowski also presented the American premieres of four of
Dmitri Shostakovich's symphonies, Numbers 1, 3, 6, and 11. In 1916, Stokowski conducted the American premiere of
Mahler's 8th Symphony, Symphony of a Thousand, whose premiere he had attended in Munich on 12 September 1910. He added works by
Rachmaninoff to his repertoire, giving the world premieres of his
Fourth Piano Concerto, the
Three Russian Songs, the
Third Symphony, and the
Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini;
Sibelius, whose last three symphonies were given their American premieres in Philadelphia in the 1920s; and
Igor Stravinsky, many of whose works were also given their first American performances by Stokowski. In 1922, he introduced Stravinsky's score for the ballet
The Rite of Spring to America, gave its first staged performance there in 1930 with
Martha Graham dancing the part of The Chosen One, and at the same time made the first American recording of the work. Seldom an opera conductor, Stokowski did give the American premieres in Philadelphia of the original version of Mussorgky's
Boris Godunov (1929) and
Alban Berg's
Wozzeck (1931). Works by such composers as
Arthur Bliss,
Max Bruch,
Ferruccio Busoni,
Julian Carrillo,
Carlos Chávez,
Aaron Copland,
George Enescu,
Manuel de Falla,
Paul Hindemith,
Gustav Holst,
Gian Francesco Malipiero,
Nikolai Myaskovsky,
Walter Piston,
Francis Poulenc,
Sergei Prokofiev,
Maurice Ravel,
Ottorino Respighi,
Albert Roussel,
Alexander Scriabin,
Elie Siegmeister,
Karol Szymanowski,
Edgard Varèse,
Heitor Villa-Lobos,
Anton Webern, and
Kurt Weill, received their American premieres under Stokowski's direction in Philadelphia. In 1933, he started "Youth Concerts" for younger audiences, which are still a tradition in Philadelphia and many other American cities, and fostered youth music programs. After disputes with the board, Stokowski began to withdraw from involvement in the Philadelphia Orchestra from 1936 onwards, allowing his co-conductor
Eugene Ormandy to gradually take over. Stokowski shared principal conducting duties with Ormandy from 1936 to 1941; Stokowski did not appear with the Philadelphia Orchestra from the closing concert of the 1940–41 season (a lackluster performance of Bach's
St. Matthew Passion) until 12 February 1960, when he guest-conducted the Philadelphia in works of Mozart, Falla, Respighi, and in a legendary performance of the Shostakovich Fifth Symphony, arguably the greatest by Stokowski. The recording of this concert's broadcast had been circulated privately among collectors over the years, though never issued commercially, but with the copyright expiring at the start of 2011, it was released in its entirety on the Pristine Classical label. Stokowski appeared as himself in the motion picture
The Big Broadcast of 1937, conducting two of his Bach transcriptions. That same year he also conducted and acted in
One Hundred Men and a Girl, with
Deanna Durbin and
Adolphe Menjou. In 1939, Stokowski collaborated with
Walt Disney to create the motion picture for which he is best known:
Fantasia. He conducted all the music (with the exception of a "jam session" in the middle of the film) and included his own orchestrations for Bach's
Toccata and Fugue in D minor and Mussorgsky's/Schubert's
Night on Bald Mountain/
Ave Maria. Stokowski even got to talk to (and shake hands with)
Mickey Mouse on screen, in a famous
silhouette footage; though, he would later say with a smile that Mickey Mouse got to shake hands with him. An ardent fan of the newest techniques in recording, Stokowski saw to it that most of the music for
Fantasia was recorded over Class A telephone lines laid down between the Academy of Music in Philadelphia and
Bell Laboratories in Camden NJ, using an early, highly complex version of multi-track stereophonic sound, dubbed
Fantasound, which shared many attributes with the later
Perspecta stereophonic sound system. Recorded on photographic film, the only suitable medium then available, the results were considered astounding for the latter half of the 1930s. Upon his return in 1960, Stokowski appeared with the Philadelphia Orchestra as a guest conductor. He also made two LP recordings with them for
Columbia Records, one including a performance of
Manuel de Falla's
El amor brujo, which he had introduced to America in 1922 and had previously recorded for RCA Victor with the
Hollywood Bowl Symphony Orchestra in 1946, and a Bach album which featured the 5th Brandenburg Concerto and three of his own Bach transcriptions. He continued to appear as a guest conductor on several more occasions, his final Philadelphia Orchestra concert taking place in 1969. In honour of Stokowski's vast influence on music and the Philadelphia performing arts community, on 24 February 1969, he was awarded the prestigious
University of Pennsylvania Glee Club Award of Merit. Beginning in 1964, this award was "established to bring a declaration of appreciation to an individual each year that has made a significant contribution to the world of music and helped to create a climate in which our talents may find valid expression."
All-American Youth Orchestra With his Philadelphia Orchestra contract having expired in 1940, Stokowski immediately formed the All-American Youth Orchestra, its players' ages ranging from 18 to 25. It toured South America in 1940 and North America in 1941 and was met with rave reviews. Although Stokowski made a number of recordings with the AAYO for Columbia, the technical standard was not as high as had been achieved with the Philadelphia Orchestra for RCA Victor. In any event, the AAYO was disbanded when America entered the
Second World War, and plans for another extensive tour in 1942 were abandoned.
NBC Symphony Orchestra During this time, Stokowski also became chief conductor of the
NBC Symphony Orchestra on a three-year contract (1941–1944).
Arturo Toscanini, the NBC Symphony's regular conductor, did not wish to undertake the 1941–42 NBC season due to friction with NBC management, though he did accept guest engagements with the Philadelphia Orchestra and continued to conduct
war bond concerts with the NBC Symphony. Stokowski conducted a great deal of contemporary music with the NBC Symphony, including the US premiere of
Prokofiev's
Alexander Nevsky in 1943, the world premieres of
Schoenberg's Piano Concerto (with
Eduard Steuermann) and
George Antheil's 4th Symphony, both in 1944, and new works by
Alan Hovhaness,
Stravinsky,
Hindemith,
Milhaud,
Howard Hanson,
William Schuman,
Morton Gould and many others. He also conducted several British works with this orchestra, including
Vaughan Williams'
4th Symphony,
Holst's
The Planets, and
George Butterworth's
A Shropshire Lad. Stokowski also made a number of recordings with the NBC Symphony for RCA Victor in 1941–42, including
Tchaikovsky's
4th Symphony, a work which was never in Toscanini's repertoire, and
Stravinsky's
Firebird Suite. Toscanini returned to the NBC Symphony in 1942; he and Stokowski shared conducting duties for the remaining two years of Stokowski's contract.
New York City Symphony Orchestra In 1944, on the recommendation of Mayor
Fiorello La Guardia, Stokowski helped form the New York City Symphony Orchestra, which they intended would make music accessible for middle-class workers. Ticket prices were set low, and performances took place at convenient, after-work hours. Many early concerts were standing room only; however, a year later in 1945, Stokowski was at odds with the board (who wanted to trim expenses even further) and he resigned. Stokowski made three 78 pm sets with the New York City Symphony for RCA Victor:
Beethoven's
6th Symphony,
Richard Strauss's
Death and Transfiguration, and a selection of orchestral music from
Georges Bizet's
Carmen.
Hollywood Bowl Symphony Orchestra In 1945, he founded the
Hollywood Bowl Symphony Orchestra. The orchestra lasted for two years before it was disbanded for live concerts, but not for recordings, which continued well into the 1960s. Stokowski's own recordings (made in 1945–46) included
Brahms's
1st Symphony, Tchaikovsky's
Pathetique Symphony and a number of short popular pieces. Some of Stokowski's open-air HBSO concerts were broadcast and recorded, and have been issued on CD, including a collaboration with
Percy Grainger on
Edvard Grieg's
Piano Concerto in A minor in the summer of 1945. He premiered "From A Moonlit Ceremony" (Moonlit Peace) by
George Frederick McKay in 1946 with Hollywood Bowl Symphony Orchestra. (It began giving live concerts again as the "
Hollywood Bowl Orchestra" in 1991, under
John Mauceri). There was a 1949 cartoon spoof of Stokowski at the Bowl with
Bugs Bunny playing the conductor in "
Long-Haired Hare" by
Chuck Jones.
New York Philharmonic He continued to appear frequently with the
Los Angeles Philharmonic, both at the
Hollywood Bowl and other venues. Then in 1946 Stokowski became a chief Guest Conductor of the
New York Philharmonic. His many first performances with them included the US premiere of
Prokofiev's
6th Symphony in 1949. He also made many recordings with the NYPO for Columbia, including the world premiere recordings of
Vaughan Williams's
6th Symphony and
Olivier Messiaen's ''
L'Ascension'', also in 1949. ''
International career However, when in 1950
Dimitri Mitropoulos was appointed Chief Conductor of the NYPO, Stokowski began a new international career which commenced in 1951 with a nationwide tour of England: during the Festival of Britain celebrations he conducted the
Royal Philharmonic Orchestra at the invitation of Sir
Thomas Beecham. It was during this first visit that he made his debut recording with a British orchestra, the
Philharmonia Orchestra, of
Rimsky-Korsakov's
Scheherazade. During that same summer he also toured and conducted in Germany, Holland, Switzerland, Austria, and Portugal, establishing a pattern of guest-conducting abroad during the summer months while spending the winter seasons conducting in the United States. This scheme was to hold good for the next 20 years during which Stokowski conducted many of the world's greatest orchestras, simultaneously making recordings with them for various labels. Thus he conducted and recorded with the main London orchestras as well as the
Berlin Philharmonic, the
Orchestre de la Suisse Romande, the
French National Radio Orchestra, the
Czech Philharmonic, the
Hilversum (Netherlands) Radio Philharmonic, and others.
Symphony of the Air, Houston Symphony Orchestra Stokowski returned to the NBC Symphony Orchestra in 1954 for a series of recording sessions for RCA Victor. The repertoire included Beethoven's 'Pastoral' Symphony, Sibelius's 2nd Symphony, Acts 2 and 3 of Tchaikovsky's
Swan Lake and highlights from
Saint-Saëns's
Samson and Delilah with
Risë Stevens and
Jan Peerce. After the NBC Symphony Orchestra was disbanded as the official ensemble of the NBC radio network, it was re-formed as the
Symphony of the Air with Stokowski as notional music director, and as such performed many concerts and made recordings from 1954 until 1963. The US premiere in 1958 of Turkish composer
Ahmet Adnan Saygun's oratorio
Yunus Emre is among them. He made a series of
Symphony of the Air recordings for the
United Artists label in 1958 which included Beethoven's 7th Symphony, Shostakovich's 1st Symphony, Khatchaturian's 2nd Symphony and Respighi's
Pines of Rome. From 1955 to 1961, Stokowski was also the music director of the
Houston Symphony. For his debut appearance with the orchestra he gave the first performance of
Mysterious Mountain by
Alan Hovhaness – one of many living American composers whose music he championed over the years. He also gave the US premiere in Houston of Shostakovich's
11th Symphony (7 April 1958) and made its first American recording on the
Capitol label.
American Symphony Orchestra, Chicago Symphony Orchestra, and London In 1960, Stokowski made one of his infrequent appearances in the opera house, when he conducted
Giacomo Puccini's
Turandot at the New York Metropolitan, in memorable performances with a cast that included
Birgit Nilsson,
Franco Corelli and
Anna Moffo. At the
New York City Opera, he had led double-bills of
Œdipus rex (with
Richard Cassilly) and
Carmina Burana (1959), as well as ''
L'Orfeo (with Gérard Souzay) and Il prigioniero'' (with
Norman Treigle, 1960). In 1962, at the age of 80, Stokowski founded the
American Symphony Orchestra (ASO). His championship of the 20th-century composer remained undiminished, and perhaps his most celebrated premiere with the American Symphony Orchestra was of
Charles Ives's
4th Symphony in 1965, which CBS also recorded. In addition, he continued to collaborate with noted contemporary soloists of the time including the pianist
Glenn Gould in a recording of Beethoven's
Piano Concerto No. 5, Op 73 ("Emperor") in 1966. Stokowski served as music director for the ASO until May 1972 when, at the age of 90, he returned to live in England. On 3 January 1962, still showing his interest in using technological innovation, he was featured in a telecast for
WGN-TV conducting the
Chicago Symphony Orchestra, which has since been made available on DVD. One of his British guest conducting engagements in the 1960s was the first Proms performance of
Gustav Mahler's
Second Symphony, Resurrection, since issued on CD. Stokowski continued to conduct for a few more years, but failing health forced him to conduct only for recording sessions. An eyewitness said that Stokowski often conducted sitting down in his later years; sometimes, as he became involved in the performance, he would stand up and conduct with remarkable energy. His last public appearance in the UK took place at the Royal Albert Hall, London, on 14 May 1974. Stokowski led the New Philharmonia in the 'Merry Waltz' of
Otto Klemperer (in tribute to the Philharmonia's former music director who had died the previous year),
Vaughan Williams's
Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis,
Ravel's
Rapsodie espagnole and
Brahms's
4th Symphony. Stokowski's final public appearance took place on 22 July 1975 during the Vence Music Festival in the South of France. He conducted the Rouen Chamber Orchestra in several of his own transcriptions of Bach.
Last years Stokowski gave his last world premiere in 1973 when, at the age of 91, he conducted
Havergal Brian's 28th Symphony in a BBC radio broadcast with the New Philharmonia Orchestra. In August 1973, Stokowski conducted the International Festival Youth Orchestra at
Royal Albert Hall in London, performing Tchaikovsky's Fifth Symphony. Edward Greenfield of The Guardian wrote: "Stokowski rallied them as though it was a vintage Philadelphia concert of the 1920s". Stokowski continued to make recordings even after he had retired from the concert platform, mainly with the National Philharmonic, another ad-hoc orchestra made up of first-desk players chosen from the main London orchestras. In 1976, he signed a recording contract with Columbia Records that would have kept him active until he was 100 years old. Stokowski died of a heart attack on 13 September 1977 at his
Nether Wallop, Hampshire, residence at the age of 95. His very last recordings, made shortly before his death, for
Columbia, included performances of the youthful
Symphony in C by
Georges Bizet and
Felix Mendelssohn's
4th Symphony, "Italian", with the
National Philharmonic Orchestra in London. He is interred at
East Finchley Cemetery. ==Recording==