Tag: Stokowski

  • Stokowski playing Bach on the organ

    Stewart Warkov, assistant manager of the Symphony of The Air in 1961 described Stokowski playing Bach on the organ: Stokowski played Bach on the organ for me, each time one of the great pieces he had arranged. The sound, the phrasing, and the registration, the ritards and the accelerandos, gave me the impression of hearing…

  • A musician’s canvas

    “A painter paints pictures on canvas. But musicians paint their pictures on silence.” -Leopold Stokowski, conductor

  • Practising at every opportunity

    The conductor Stokowski was co-conductor of the San Francisco Symphony Orchestra.  He was rehearsing his own orchestration of Mussorgsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition.  The orchestra, however, was used to playing Ravel’s exuberant orchestration. Charles O’Connell recalled: “In the midst of the rehearsal, one of the second violinists busied himself practising the Mendelssohn Violin Concerto, which…

  • Stokowski on contemporary music

    Leopold Stokowski was a champion of contemporary music. He conducted music without judgement, believing judgement to be the public’s job. During the Philadelphia Symphony Orchestra’s 1915-16 season,he programmed orchestral suites from Stravinsky’s Firebird and Petrushka, Richard Strauss’ Alpine Symphony, Scriabin’s Poem of Ecstasy, and Schoenberg’s Kammersymphonie No. 1. “This last, very cerebral work, although not…