Word: stokowskis
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...source of problems between Stokowski and the Philadelphia Orchestra was money. Even though Philadelphians revered their orchestra's music director and may ultimately have been responsible for securing Stokowski a contract that paid him $2000 per concert, they publicly criticized him for demanding what was then an astronomical fee. Money was only one bone of contention, though. As Stokowski's salary went up, he demanded that the number of concerts scheduled each season drop, inciting the anger of management. The straw that broke the camel's back was Stokowski's insistence on programming contemporary works: he viewed the well-subscribed...
...Stokowski had little more success in his co-conductorships. His tenure with the NBC Symphony ended after two years because the joint director, Arturo Toscanini, felt that Stokowski's musical ideas were too divergent from his own to make a joint directorship possible. Toscanini, the purist, had only a mite of sympathy for Stokowski's revolutionary ideas about adjusting acoustics and reseating orchestras. The problems were almost exactly duplicated and Stokowski ousted exactly seven years later, when he was hired to co-direct the New York Philharmonic with Dmitri Mitropoulos. The flamboyant Stokowski, whose glamorous life was already shrouded...
WHATEVER PETTY financial conflicts, unpleasant personality traits or questionable musical taste were associated with him, Stokowski's positive progressive instinct surfaced steadily and surely. To Stokowski the sound an orchestra produced and the reaction it drew from an audience were more important than anything else in a concert. If this necessitated a breach in propriety or break from formal performance practice, he sanctioned it. Stokowski conducted without a baton, and partly because of that was considered one of the most difficult conductors to follow. He relied in its stead upon subtle gestures and facial expressions to produce the desired results...
Among the offended was one critic from the Cleveland Leader, who wrote about Stokowski in 1912 when he was leaving the Cincinnati Orchestra to conduct in Philadelphia...
Thus ends for Cincinnati, at least, the drum and cymbal career of Leopold Stokowski, who made Beethoven dance on his ears; who made Brahms a puling, sickly sentimentalist; who calcined Strauss in more clashing and fighting colors than Strauss ever knew; and who Stokowski-ized each composer whom he took into his directorial hands...