Word: one
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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...essential condition for a great orchestra is stability." Over 68 years, only nine men had shaped and polished the Boston Symphony until it was-except for Arturo Toscanini's virtuoso radio orchestra, the NBC Symphony, which is in a class by itself-the U.S.'s finest and one of the top four in the world...
...taught it how to "poetize," and perhaps he taught too well; at a rehearsal in 1904 Guest Conductor Richard Strauss growled: "You play that finely; but a little too finely. I want some roughness here." The Berlin Opera's Karl Muck (1906-08, 1912-18), wrote one critic, gave the orchestra "a living voice...
Muck's successor, Pierre Monteux (now the San Francisco Symphony's conductor) let it sing modern music-Stravinsky, Falla, Honegger, Milhaud. Then, in 1924, began the 25-year reign of Serge Koussevitzky, onetime bass-viol virtuoso and one of the great conductors of his time. Under his stern but benevolent rule, the Boston had come to a peak of polished perfection, and U.S. composers, subsidized and encouraged with commissions, had found a new home...
Wise Founder Higginson had taken other steps to insure stability. In 1903, he set up a musicians' pension plan, the first in any U.S. orchestra. That is one reason why Boston Symphony musicians stay around and learn how to play together. Eleven men have been in the orchestra 30 years or more, another 40 men more .than 20 years...
...Boston "Pops" and at Tanglewood in the summer, get 49 paychecks a year from the symphony for 47 weeks of work. The size of the checks helps keep them happy too: first desk men make not less than $10,000, not including broadcasting and recording fees; no one gets less than $4,860 in salary, which is well above the A.F.M. scale...