Edward Johnson writes…
Stokowski is 141 today. He was born in London on April 18, 1882 and started his musical life as a church organist. However, he soon moved to the orchestral podium where he was to become one of the twentieth-century’s greatest maestros. Happily there are quite a few Stokowski videos on YouTube and here are several to mark his birthday.
First comes his movie debut, conducting two of his Bach arrangements in The Big Broadcast of 1937…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MQ3Y7FoZfe8
He made his first UK TV appearance in 1954 with the BBCSO. Their programme featured his own Purcell Suite and included ‘Dido’s Lament’…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m-Mp-S985E8
He formed the American Symphony Orchestra in 1962 and in this rehearsal of the Leonore No.3 Overture from 1968 he showed that even at the age of eighty-eight, he’d lost none of his vitality…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kmcr79tzwwM
His Ninetieth-Birthday Concert with the LSO at the RFH in 1972 was a sell-out. It marked the Sixtieth-Anniversary of his debut with the LSO and to mark the occasion their 1912 programme was given an exact repeat. It included Debussy’s Prelude to the Afternoon of a Faun, a work he’d recorded on an acoustic 78 in 1924 in what was its first American recording. At the age of ninety he was clearly very frail and no longer conducting from memory as he used to in his younger days. Incidentally, when the camera focuses on the strings, you’ll notice that John Georgiadis and his section are bowing independently in accordance with Stokowski’s instructions. He disliked “regimentation” in the strings and their “free bowing” contributed immensely to what critics called the “Stokowski Sound”…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ArORmjt4ltY
Finally, that same Ninetieth-Birthday year saw a deluge of “Happy Birthday” letters from many of the composers whose music Stokowski had conducted, from Barber and Bernstein to Shostakovich and Tippett. This video features a selection of them, all deeply grateful for his championship of their works…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A7sHtp_k92M
There are many more Stokowski videos in the great YouTube archive, so don’t hesitate to search them out!
Wonderful memory for me.
Except I got a ticket to the overspill concert at the RAH soon afterwards. Also a sell out at such short notice. Amazing.
One of my most treasured memories.
We had more encores than the earlier concert I think.
I have the box LP set but never know what music comes from what concert .
Edward you mention he was frail. Yes of course but I then attended his later concerts with identical delight.
Truly a phenomenon of unique qualities.
Thanks for these treasures.
Edward – I must confess to being very jealous that you heard Stoki live (I am too young) and in the wonderful 60th Anniversary concert with the LSO in 1972. I do understand in answer to your query that the whole of the Phase 4 box set is from the Albert Hall concert with the exception of the first few bars of the Meistersinger Overture. You can’t tell because of the close miking. And you’re right there were more encores at the Albert Hall which were issued on a separate Phase 4 LP (Trumpet Voluntary, Duparc’s Extase etc).
Been watching the birthday boy at his birthday concert all those years ago.
How times change. No ladies in the orchestra except perhaps the harp.
How did female music graduates survive then?
Our wizard did not need glasses at 90. Amazing.
The make up of the orchesta had many players now regarded as icons on their instruments . Jack Brymer for one.
To think we still had five more happy and glorious years ahead to bask in the Stokowski sound.
I am now going to listen to some Brahms from 1928. No 3. Then to hear Toscha Seidel in Chausson’s best work, Poem for Violin and Orchestra from 1945.
Happy Birthday Maestro.
Inimitable and never to be forgotten.