Dimitri Mitropoulos (1896-1960)

THE NEW YORK PHILHARMONIC
SHELBY WHITE & LEON LEVY DIGITAL ARCHIVES 

More Than 120 Marked Scores from Former Music Director Dimitri Mitropoulos Released Today

Complements Sony Classical’s New Box Set of Mitropoulos’s Complete Recordings for RCA and Columbia

Top: Schoenberg’s Erwartung
Bottom: Schuller’s Spectra
Courtesy of the NY Phil Digital Archives

More than 120 scores marked by former New York Philharmonic Music Director Dimitri Mitropoulos are now available to the public for the first time through the NY Phil Shelby White & Leon Levy Digital Archives. The release of these scores coincides with Sony Classical’s new 69-CD box set of Mitropoulos’s complete recordings for RCA and Columbia, including those during his tenure as Philharmonic Music Director, 1949–58. The Mitropoulos scores will be the most significant addition of music to the Philharmonic Digital Archives since the launch of Leonard Bernstein’s collection in 2011; they join the Archives’s current holding of marked scores from past Music Directors and conductors, including Mahler, Toscanini, Rodziński, Leinsdorf, Boulez, Mehta, and Masur.

The Mitropoulos marked scores were loaned to the Archives by the University of Iowa’s Rita Benton Music Library, which acquired them from a private donor. The markings reflect Mitropoulos’s process of committing music to memory before the first rehearsal. The material released includes the scores of works that received their US and World Premieres by the Philharmonic, including compositions by Schoenberg and Mahler (US Premieres) and Barber, Schuller, and Krenek. 

About the Digital Archives

The New York Philharmonic Shelby White & Leon Levy Digital Archives was launched in February 2011, and currently comprises more than four million pages, including printed programs, marked conducting scores, business documents, and photographs. Growing continually, the scope of the online collection is every document in the New York Philharmonic Archives from 1842 through 1970. This includes correspondence, marked scores and parts, contracts, and minutes from meetings of the Board of Directors — as well as all public documents from 1970 through today (e.g., marketing materials, press releases, and annual reports).