Word: orchestra
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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...Cabot, "that they were all available." The man they were seeking would be "the boss" in every sense of the word: in programing, choice of soloists and guest conductors. The Boston's trustees could promise this because they still follow the enviable first principles laid down by the orchestra's founder, Major Henry Lee Higginson: relationship of orchestra to conductor-absolute obedience; relationship of conductor to Higginson-absolute freedom. They also needed a man who could bear the burden of conducting at least 90 concerts...
...name of Munch was not big in U.S. music. He had visited for the first time in the 1946-47 season, to be guest conductor in Boston, New York, Chicago and Los Angeles; in 1948 he had conducted the French National (Radio) Orchestra on its U.S. tour. Although he had won respectful notices from critics, his name had seldom appeared in the calculations of the pundits and prophets who wanted to call the tune on Boston's new conductor. From the time 75-year-old Conductor Serge Koussevitzky announced that he would abdicate...
...Flat Stomach. When Bostonians heard Munch conduct their orchestra on his 1946 visit, his music had shocked some. It seemed more violent and more rushed, particularly in the allegro movements of Beethoven symphonies. But one man was not at all surprised when Munch was asked to succeed Koussy. The New York Herald Tribune's Virgil Thomson had heard Munch conduct 15 years before in Paris and had prophesied that he would eventually lead the Boston. Why? Says Critic Thomson: "He was a natural Boston conductor, flat-stomached and grey-haired, and he created hysteria, particularly in the female over...
...orchestra to which Charles Munch has fallen heir was not the U.S.'s oldest. It was founded in 1881, 39 years after the New York Philharmonic. But it was the second oldest symphonic organization, and Conductor Munch was a descendant of a distinguished line of "permanent" conductors. Founder Higginson believed that "the 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...
...Some Roughness Here." Each conductor, beginning with German Georg Henschel in 1881, had added something to the Boston's sheen. From 1884 to 1889 and from 1898 to 1906, the Vienna Opera's bearded Wilhelm Gericke, as Founder Higginson wrote, "gave to the orchestra its excellent habits and ideals." It was he, said Higginson, who "taught those violins to sing as violins sing in Vienna alone." Europe's greatest conductor, fiery Hungarian Artur Nikisch (1889-93) taught it how to "poetize," and perhaps he taught too well; at a rehearsal in 1904 Guest Conductor Richard Strauss growled...