Word: mengelberg
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Dates: during 1930-1939
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...years ago a pale young Hungarian violinist playing in the orchestra at Manhattan's Capitol cinemansion, applied to Conductor Willem Mengelberg for the job of assistant concertmaster with the New York Philharmonic, was refused. The refusal proved fortunate for young Eugene (English for Jeno) Ormandy. Not long afterwards the sudden illness of the Capitol conductor gave Ormandy a chance to show that he could conduct Tchaikovsky's Fourth Symphony from memory. Eugene Ormandy was leading a radio orchestra when he was called upon last year to pinch-hit for Conductor Arturo Toscanini whose glass arm kept him from...
Last week instead of Conductor Leopold Stokowski, Eugene Ormandy took the Philadelphia Orchestra to Manhattan, to Carnegie Hall stage where Conductor Mengelberg refused to let him play ten years ago. The audience loudly approved his firm, clear beat, his authority over the orchestra, his unmannered way of letting the music speak for itself. He suggested to some people the simple, hard-working conductor that Stokowski used to be before he let his pale hair grow...
...Conductors sat at harpsichords before they ever thought of standing up in front of their orchestras, waving the first stout batons. In just such a fashion big, bewigged Handel made music for the Londoners of King George I. In the U. S. Karl Muck and Willem Mengelberg have conducted from keyboards...
...conduct lately were not surprised when it was announced last week that he would be unable to finish his midwinter engagement with Manhattan's Philharmonic-Symphony. Since early in the summer Toscanini has suffered excruciating pain in his right arm. Like many a conductor before him (Leopold Stokowski, Willem Mengelberg, Richard Strauss), he has a sub-deltoid bursitis or "glass arm," an affliction which orchestra leaders and schoolboys get from the same cause. Schoolboys get it from throwing pebbles or crabapples instead of baseballs, conductors from putting too much energy into their waving of a light, non-resistant baton. Toscanini...
Four of the five greatest European conductors have had U. S. fiascoes. Aged Karl Muck was repudiated by the Boston Symphony on a hazy charge of pro-Germanism. Wilhelm Furtwangler and Willem Mengelberg were popular for a time in Manhattan, then severely criticized and not invited to return. Bruno Walter was twice guest leader of the defunct New York Symphony, but in his brief regime he could not raise it from the lethargy into which it had sunk after years under Walter Damrosch. The fifth great maestro, who has not failed, is Arturo Toscanini. Under his guidance the New York...