Search Results

This chapter details how the author of this book meets Leonard Bernstein and starts working with him as an assistant conductor with the New York Philharmonic 1961-2. He then takes part in the less than successful move to Lincoln Center, starts a professional conducting career that will lead to major orchestra and opera engagements including the premier of Bernstein's Mass, and his later reconstructions of American landmark concerts.

This chapter examines the dark period in Bernstein's career. It first tries to determine the real reason/s behind Bernstein's decision to take a hiatus from conducting (one of which may be his blacklisting by the CBS and the State Department). It looks at the marginalization and isolation of the American Progressives from the mainstream of American liberalism. The next section examines the repression of several works during the 1950s, before it shifts to an account of Bernstein's experience of confessing to political sin and signing an affidavit that stated that he was not a communist and had never followed the communist line. From there, it follows Bernstein's rise back to the New York Philharmonic and identifies the ways used to recreate him as a mythic culture hero.

An artistic highlight of Anton Rubinstein's American tour was a series of more than forty appearances with Theodore Thomas and his orchestra. Rubinstein and Thomas had a successful musical rapport, which inspired some of the pianist's best performances. Rubinstein conducted six performances of his Ocean Symphony in its then complete, six-movement version, four with Thomas's orchestra, one with the Harvard Musical Association, and one with the New York Philharmonic. Rubinstein's series of seven farewell recitals in New York (and three in Boston) that surveyed the history of keyboard literature is deservedly famous. Each recital was substantial and generally well performed, but Rubinstein's occasional memory lapses and technical slips were evident. By primarily performing the music of other composers, Rubinstein played a strategic role in the canonization of the standard piano repertoire, and his impassioned performances of these works made them palatable for the first time to the general public.

Leopold Damrosch, who succeeded in developing a transitional orchestra in 1877 that bore his name and which emerged following an adverse professional circumstance, was an ardent and knowledgeable advocate of Richard Wagner's music and a former leading member of Franz Liszt's inner circle at Weimar. His appointment with the New York Philharmonic occurred during the widespread economic depression created after the financial panic of 1873. In addition, Damrosch's programming for his new orchestra can be briefly placed with respect to continuing critical and aesthetic tensions centering on important issues in nineteenth-century America. Although the Leopold Damrosch Orchestra has been little heralded in the current accounts, it still significantly contributed to the expansion and flourishing of professional orchestral activity in New York City during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

Soon after he arrived in California, Bruno Walter opened the Los Angeles Philharmonic's season with five concerts. It marked his return to conducting since the death of his daughter Gretel. Over the next few years, he would travel back and forth across the United States, stopping in the middle of the country in places like Kansas City to thrill audiences that had not heard him before. He also agreed to give a benefit recital with Lotte Lehmann for the French and American Red Cross, but the Nazis captured France before the money could even be donated. Walter sought refuge once again in his work as a conductor in America, performing with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, the Los Angeles Philharmonic, the NBC Symphony Orchestra, the New York Philharmonic, the Detroit Symphony Orchestra, and the Philadelphia Orchestra, among others. In addition, he signed a contract with the Metropolitan Opera for a series of performances. With the end of World War II, Walter decided to return to Europe to conduct beginning in 1947.

The downtown marathons of Bang on a Can might seem worlds away from the American symphony orchestra, but in the mid-1980s they shared a common context: David Lang worked for the New York Philharmonic in this period as an assistant to composer-in-residence Jacob Druckman. His assistantship was part of the granting organization Meet the Composer’s Orchestra Residencies Program, which placed American composers in residencies with symphony orchestras and fundamentally reshaped the relationship between new music and the marketplace. The program’s most high-profile success, the Philharmonic’s 1983 Horizons festival, captured an unprecedented audience for new music via its heavily publicized theme of “A New Romanticism?” And Lang’s subsequent work with the Philharmonic provided him with experience and connections, as well as a growing ambivalence toward the orchestral sphere that shaped the maverick mindset of Bang on a Can.

The violinist Henryk Wieniawski, though at first in Rubinstein's shadow, soon developed his own following appreciative of his pure tone and phenomenal technique. Rubinstein's other assisting artists, the soprano Louise Liebhart and the contralto Louise Ormeny, were not as well received. Besides concerto appearances with orchestra, Rubinstein also performed in a series of chamber music concerts in New York and at a concert of the New York Philharmonic. Rubinstein's association with the Steinway firm was both musically and socially beneficial.

In February 1947, Bruno Walter was appointed musical adviser of the New York Philharmonic after Artur Rodzinski resigned as musical director. Walter soon began planning his conducting activities for the 1947–1948 season, with the assistance of his friend Wolfgang Stresemann, a composer and an aspiring conductor. His conducting activities included Daniel Gregory Mason's Symphony no. 2, as well as Hollywood Bowl concerts featuring Richard Wagner, Johannes Brahms, Antonin Dvořák, Claude Debussy, and others. Beginning in 1947, he made numerous return visits to Europe, performing in cities such as Salzburg, Vienna, and Munich. A reunion with the Concertgebouw Orchestra produced a concert for Richard Strauss's Don Juan. He traveled back to New York on January 22, 1948, to give the New York Philharmonic premiere of Strauss's Metamorphosen. Walter went back to London for several more concerts, including an account of Ludwig van Beethoven's Ninth with the London Philharmonic Orchestra. Walter canceled his European engagements for the 1948–1949 season, but still had a remarkably busy schedule.

This chapter considers Schuman's various attempts to use his position and influence to extend his ideas of music education, musical diplomacy, and American contemporary music. It looks at the establishment of the BMI Student Composer Awards and Schuman's pressure upon the managers of the Metropolitan Opera Association and the New York Philharmonic to perform American music. Also striking is Schuman's role in brokering a number of mergers: 1) the National Institute of Arts and Letters with the American Academy of Arts and Letters; 2) the High School of Music and Art and the High School of Performing Arts; and 3) the International Society of Contemporary Music (U.S. Section) and the League of Composers. The chapter ends by looking at Schuman's Credendum, commissioned by the U.S. National Commission for UNESCO.

Theodore Thomas was one of America's most influential conductors and orchestra builders. He led the Brooklyn Philharmonic Society, the New York Philharmonic, and the Chicago Orchestra (later renamed the Chicago Symphony Orchestra). Thomas's music library, as well as the unpublished portion of his concert programs, showed a much broader range of repertory and shed new light on his performances of American works and relationships with American composers. He continued to program music by American composers, and his American concerts in his Chicago summer series were part of a trend. Moreover, Thomas did not grow more conservative in his later years. He then conducted at least four hundred individual works by more than 150 composers who were either native-born or resident Americans.

It is not clear what had happened to Delia Reinhardt, a much-admired leading soprano at the Berlin State Opera from 1924 to 1937, during World War II, but an account based on the memories of her friends and acquaintances suggests that her career foundered due to Nazi politics. She then developed an interest in the teachings of Rudolf Steiner, the founder of anthroposophy. It was Reinhardt who kindled Bruno Walter's interest in Steiner's teachings, which would influence his own views on Christianity over the years. This chapter focuses on Walter's conducting activities between 1949 and 1956 that took him to Los Angeles, New York, and Europe. His performances include a rare collaboration with Leon Fleisher, supported by the Standard Symphony Orchestra, and concerts with the New York Philharmonic, the Berlin Philharmonic, the Metropolitan Opera, the NBC Symphony Orchestra, and the Musikalische Akademie.

On March 7, 1957, Bruno Walter suffered a heart attack, forcing him to cancel his remaining performances for the year and to restrict his musical activities to concerts and recordings. He conducted only a handful of concerts in 1958, the first of which took place on February 26 with the New York Philharmonic. In the middle of March, however, he gave two performances of Franz Schubert's “Unfinished” and Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart's Requiem in Chicago. He also performed Anton Bruckner's “Romantic” in Los Angeles and San Francisco in April and May. In 1959, his public appearances were limited to three events, including a program for the Los Angeles Philharmonic and his farewell to the Metropolitan Opera. During the 1959–1960 season, he conducted in the first Mahler Festival given by the New York Philharmonic. In February 1960, he made his first commercial recording of Bruckner's Fourth with the Columbia Symphony Orchestra. The year 1960 also witnessed his very last public performance. Walter died on the morning of February 17, 1962.

Though Schuman routinely recycled his music, American Hymn stands out. Derived from a movement from an earlier withdrawn brass quintet, Schuman created three distinct versions of American Hymn, including an extended orchestral work that some of his younger peers felt was one of Schuman's great works. Schuman experienced a rediscovery of sorts as the musical environment around him grew more sympathetic to the kinds of harmonic and structural operations that permeated his music. He composed two more collections of choral works and appeared to be ready to tackle a longstanding commission he had from the New York Philharmonic. Emergency triple bypass surgery put a temporary halt to his compositional plans.

The careers of Anthony Philip Heinrich, William Henry Fry, and George Frederick Bristow converged around 1853 as each one entered into an open conflict with the New York Philharmonic. The source of their discontent was the orchestra’s lack of interest in performing music by local composers despite a clause in its bylaws stipulating otherwise. Using the rhetoric of Know-Nothing nativism, Fry and Bristow publicly accused the Philharmonic of transforming New York City into a German musical colony at the expense of American composers. Giving credence to their position, the French conductor Louis Antoine Jullien programmed several works by both composers during an expansive national tour (1853–1854), as well as in Great Britain, his home base. The public brouhaha lasted for several months and concluded with Bristow resigning from his position as a Philharmonic violinist. This chapter includes descriptions of six symphonies by Fry, one by Bristow, and two by Heinrich.

Leonard Bernstein’s first Japan tour with the New York Philharmonic in 1961 was shaped by the politics of the Cold War. The US government’s interest was manifested in the sponsorship of the tour by the Congress for Cultural Freedom (CCF), while Japan eagerly hosted the tour as part of the commemoration of the five hundredth anniversary of the city of Tokyo. The participation of emerging star Seiji Ozawa as Bernstein’s assistant conductor added special meaning for the Japanese audience. The tour was the much awaited occasion for Kazuko Amano to meet Bernstein in person for the first time.

As music director of the Gewandhaus Orchestra of Leipzig, Bruno Walter conducted numerous concerts not only in Germany but also in other cities such as Amsterdam, Paris, New York, and London. Many players wrote to Walter after World War I, especially the music devotees who had experienced his conducting. In his new role as Gewandhauskapellmeister, Walter conducted his first concert in October 1929. In his first season with the Gewandhaus, he conducted ten of the regularly scheduled nineteen concerts (and two additional concerts). In early 1930, he conducted Johann Strauss's opera Die Fledermaus in Amsterdam. During the 1931–1932 season, he made a successful return trip to New York by conducting the New York Philharmonic before heading back to Leipzig and Berlin for another round of concerts. Walter abruptly left Leipzig due to pressure from the Nazis, settling in Austria with his family.

The year 1956 marked Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart's 200th birthday and was celebrated with a deluge of fetes and performances dedicated to him. Bruno Walter, who also turned eighty that year, conducted several concerts at the New York Philharmonic for a Mozart Festival in March. He also became preoccupied in late February and March with a performance of Mozart's Die Zauberflöte at the Metropolitan Opera. In 1957, he published a book entitled Von der Musik und vom Musizieren, translated to Of Music and Music-Making two years later. He conducted a few concerts of standard repertoire with the Los Angeles Philharmonic—at the Hollywood Bowl in August and at Philharmonic Auditorium in November. Walter contemplated on ending his regular guest appearances with the New York Philharmonic after the 1956–1957 season. One of his friends, Arturo Toscanini, died on January 16, 1957. By March, Walter was conducting the first performance of Die Zauberflöte for the 1956–1957 season.

In 1970, Leonard Bernstein and the New York Philharmonic returned to Japan for the second tour, again with Seiji Ozawa. The tour was organized partly in conjunction with the Osaka Expo ’70, symbolizing Japan’s rapid rise as an economic power and the expansion of the classical music fan base in the nation. Seiji Ozawa, now an international maestro in his own right, led the tour along with Bernstein and conducted Toru Takemitsu’s November Steps. During the tour, Kazuko Amano and her family enjoyed their second encounter with Bernstein, but her joyful time was cut short by her domestic obligations.