Leopold Stokowski - Biography
Leopold Stokowski the famous conductor was born in London on April 18th 1882 and died in Hampshire England September 18th 1977. Stokowski was always somewhat elusive about his origins even insisting for a while that he was five year younger and of noble Polish background. He was in fact the son of a Polish cabinet maker and an Irish mother. Adding to the mystery is that he spoke English with a slight Eastern European accent. Little is known of his early years before he entered the Royal College of Music a 14. He studied with Wilford Davies and Sir Charles Stanford, one of his fellow students was Ralph Vaughan Williams who was ten years older and whose compositions Stokowski would later champion.. He became the organist and choir director of St. James Piccadilly when he was 18; concurrently he earned a Bachelor’s degree in Queens College Oxford.
He accepted, in 1905, a position in New York as organist and choir director in the socially prominent St. Bartholomew Church then located in Madison Square. Stokowski was to marry Olga Samaroff a virtuoso pianist (actually Lucy Hickenlooper from San Antonio Texas). Samaroff though the same age as Stokowski was already a well known artist and convinced her agents to get him concerts in Paris and London as a conductor even though he had never conducted an orchestra. The good reviews from these concerts got Stokowski the position of conductor of the Cincinnati Symphony in 1909 at age 27. Even though he was a great success his imperious manner particularly over his programming of Modern music created conflict with the board of directors. Stokowski resigned in 1912 to become conductor of the Philadelphia Orchestra. Philadelphia though a much larger city then Cincinnati had only had a permanent orchestra since 1900 and had not yet become a first rate one. This was all to change with Stokowski. He recruited the finest musicians in the country and along with his personal glamour (then tall slim blonde and blue eyed) created a sensation. He wanted the orchestra to tour in New York and his vehicle to do it in 1916 was Mahler’s Eighth Symphony that called for nearly a thousand performers which was then only six years old and never had been performed in America. The concert was spectacularly successful.
In 1917, Stokowski was to form a relationship with the Victor Recording Company of Camden New Jersey for whom he was to make a series of abridged recordings of symphonies and other recordings using the limited acoustic horn recording method. Stokowski continued his crusade for modern music and performed in the early 1920’s what was then the modern music of Scriabin, Schoenberg and Stravinsky and lectured the conservative patrons from the podium when they walked out of the hall. When Victor introduced electrical recordings with microphones in 1926 Stokowski was to make a series of un- abridged recordings of the standard symphonic repertoire often with a short analysis of the work by Stokowski on a separate 78 rpm side. Among this series was a recording of Rachmaninoff’s Second Piano Concerto played by Rachmaninoff. Stokowski in the early 1930’s gave the American premiere of Berg’s Wozzeck and Schoenberg’s massive cantata Gurrelieder that was recorded live. Stokowski also made brilliant but controversial recordings of his arrangements of Bach organ works and his arrangement’s of Wagner’s Tristan, Parsifal and the Ring operas which he called ‘symphonic synthesis’ This series of recordings gave Stokowski and the Philadelphia Orchestra worldwide fame. Stokowski abandoned the use of a baton and often had theatre lights focus on his hands. He experimented with colored lights when performing Scriabin and Rimsky Korsakov’s Scheherazade. He re arranged orchestral seating to create greater brilliance of sound particularly from the strings. After twenty four years at his post and tired of squabbles with his board of directors over his programming and salary which they felt were extravagant in the depression era resigned in 1936 in favor of Eugene Ormandy, he would continue to give concerts and make recordings with Philadelphia for another four years.
Stokowski in the late 1930’s became very interested motion pictures (he was even dating Greta Garbo) initially he made a rather silly movie with the teenaged soprano Deana Durbin entitled 100 Men and a Girl. A year later he was to collaborate with Walt Disney to create Fantasia. Making Fantasia he recorded and arranged all the music leading the Philadelphia Orchestra in one of the first uses of Stereophonic sound. Stokowski is probably best known in popular culture as the white haired man who shakes Mickey’s hand after The Sorcerer’s Apprentice. Stokowski in 1941 created the All -American youth Orchestra that had young musicians train under Stokowski. In 1942 Toscanini balked at continuing with the NBC Symphony so they hired Stokowski as insurance. Toscanini was infuriated by Stokowski’s methods and interpretations and returned to the orchestra. Stokowski next made a series of 78 rpm recordings with the Hollywood Bowl Orchestra and conducted the New York Symphony sponsored by the city to help under employed musicians. With the resignation of Artur Rodzinski in 1947 he became came co musical advisor of the New York Philharmonic with whom he made a series of excellent recordings for Columbia. Stokowski as can be deduced led a nomadic existence in the 1940’s. He became fodder for the tabloids when he married the glamorous Gloria Vanderbilt who was young enough to be his granddaughter (they had 2 sons). With the advent of long playing records RCA Victor contracted him to make a series with a group of handpicked New York musicians who free lanced under the rather immodest name ‘Of his Symphony’. Brilliantly recorded and performed the trained ear can tell that it was a reduced sized orchestra. When Toscanini retired in 1954 the NBC Symphony was disbanded and the orchestra continued on as The Symphony of the Air Stokowski often conducted and recorded with them.
Stokowski now was doing more concerts and recordings in England and France and Capitol Records made some signifigant recordings. Stokowski in 1955 became the music director of the Houston Symphony (which he insisted on pronouncing as Whoston) Capitol and Everest Records made fine recordings the prize of which is Shostakovich’s Eleventh Symphony. He had his Met Opera premiere at 77 conducting Puccini’s Turandot. Stokowski at 80 founded the American Symphony Orchestra an advanced training orchestra for younger musicians based in Carnegie Hall. Concurrently Decca/London Records was developing an audiophile label Phase 4 and signed Stokowski to make recordings of his prime repertoire with English and later Dutch and Czech orchestras. The first recording of Scheherazade was an immediate success (the CD release has a rehearsal tape where he is prodding and bullying the London Symphony). Stokowski was to make more news when he gave the world premiere performance and recording of Charles Ives supposedly un-performable Fourth Symphony to a resounding success. In his eighties he was performing other radical works by Henry Cowell and Messiaen and he was the first major supporter of Varese.
Stokowski at the age of 90 resigned from the American Symphony and returned to England where he gave occasional concerts and made many more recordings. Some people felt that Stokowski was too enfeebled to perform but as soon as he mounted the podium he was in total command. He was scheduled to make a recording of Rachmaninoff’s Second Symphony when he quietly passed on September 18th 1977.
Stokowski was maybe the most controversial of the great conductors. His personal eccentricities made some serous minded musicians view him as a charlatan His arrangements and tampering with orchestration of works enraged many critics. He felt that the noisy ending of Tchaikovsky’s Romeo and Juliet and closed quietly with quiet wind chords. His Bach transcriptions were greatly criticized but at the time ( 1920’s and 1930’s) very few people could hear the work on an organ and Stokowski felt he was offering a service by making it available to a wide public. Stokowski had more to do with developing good recorded sound than any other musician. That he was a master of getting exactly what he wanted from an orchestra was without a doubt. The Stokowski Sound was immediately recognizable. His astonishing seventy year conducting career has no equal. We are lucky that we have enormous recorded documentation of this wizard.