The
New York Philharmonic
is the oldest
symphony
orchestra
in the
United States
.
[1]
It performs most of its concerts at the
Avery Fisher Hall
in
New York
.
The orchestra started in
1842
. At that time it was called the
Philharmonic Society
. At its first concert the orchestra played a very long programme which included
Beethoven’s
Symphony No. 5
conducted by
Ureli Corelli Hill
. The musicians worked as a
cooperative
or "communistic" society. This meant that the musicians themselves made up the rules about how the orchestra should be run: who would become a member, which music would be performed, and who would conduct. At the end of each season they divided any money the orchestra had earned amongst themselves.
Beethoven's ninth and a new home, 1846
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The orchestra were a great success, but they needed a new
concert hall
. They gave a fund-raising concert which included
Beethoven
's
Symphony No. 9
. It was the first time it had ever been played in America. The concert took place in Castle Garden on the southern tip of Manhattan. There were about 400 performers in the orchestra and
choir
. The words that the choir sings were translated into
English
. It was the first time this work had been sung in English anywhere in the world. However, the tickets cost a lot of money: US$2.00 each, so not so many people came. It was some time before the orchestra got their concert hall. Many people thought Beethoven's 9th symphony was a strange piece of music because the choir only sing in the last movement which is called "
Ode to Joy
". In
1865
Theodore Eisfeld
conducted the Orchestra’s memorial concert for the recently
assassinated
Abraham Lincoln
, but the last movement was not performed because it was thought that the "Ode to Joy" was not suitable for the sad occasion.
Competition from another orchestra, 1878
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Leopold Damrosch
, who had been
Franz Liszt
's
concertmaster
at
Weimar
, was the orchestra’s conductor for the
1876
-
1877
season. But the public did not like him, so he started his own orchestra: the
Symphony Society of New York
. When he died in
1885
, his 23-year-old son Walter Johannes Damrosch took over and continued the competition with the old Philharmonic. It was Walter who would make the rich
Scotsman
Andrew Carnegie
realize that New York needed a really good
concert hall
and on
May 5
,
1891
both Walter and the
Russian
composer
Tchaikovsky
conducted at the first concert of the city's new
Music Hall
. A few years later this new hall was renamed Carnegie Hall after the man who gave the money for it to be built.
Theodore Thomas
began conducting the Philharmonic in
1877
and made it a very good orchestra. In
1891
Thomas left New York to
found
the
Chicago Symphony Orchestra
.
Anton Seidl
conducted the orchestra until
1898
. Seidl had worked as
Wagner
's
assistant
and was famous for conducting Wagner’s music. He gave the first performance of
Antonin Dvo?ak
's Ninth Symphony "
From the New World
." Many people were sad when Seidl suddenly died in 1898 from
food poisoning
at the age of 47. Twelve thousand people applied for tickets to his
funeral
at the
Metropolitan Opera House
at 39th Street and Broadway and the streets were jammed with people and traffic.
In 1909 the orchestra was organized differently. Instead of a cooperative, they were run by a small group of people called
guarantors
. They persuaded
Gustav Mahler
to be principal conductor. Instead of 18 concerts a season they gave 54, which included a tour of
New England
. Mahler was used to conducting
opera
, but now he could conduct
symphonies
, and he introduced audiences to his own compositions. During his time the orchestra were given regular
salaries
for the first time.
Between
1911
and
1920
, the Philharmonic's conductor was
Josef Stransky
, who led every single one of the orchestra's concerts during this period.
When the Philharmonic joined together with the
National Symphony
in
1921
, they had the
Dutch
conductor
Willem Mengelberg
. He stayed there for nine years, although other conductors, including
Bruno Walter
,
Wilhelm Furtwangler
,
Igor Stravinsky
, and
Arturo Toscanini
, led about half the concerts. They started to have an outdoor symphony series, playing low-priced summer concerts at
Lewisohn Stadium
in upper Manhattan. In 1920 the orchestra hired
Henry Hadley
as "associate conductor" to perform concerts which included works by American composers.
In
1924
, the
Young People's Concerts
were started, and soon grew to 15 concerts per season by the end of the 1920s. They started to make recordings. In
1928
they joined together with another orchestra, the
New York Symphony Society
. Toscanini conducted the newly organized orchestra, and continued until
1936
.
The English conductor
John Barbirolli
and the
Pole
Artur Rodzinski
, were joint replacements for Toscanini in
1936
. The next year Barbirolli was made the main conductor, a post he held until the spring of
1941
. In
1943
, Rodzinski became conductor. He had also been conducting on the Sunday afternoon radio broadcast when
CBS
listeners around the country heard the announcer break in on
Arthur Rubinstein
's performance of
Brahms
's Second Piano Concerto to tell them about the attack on
Pearl Harbor
.
Artur Rodzinski,
Bruno Walter
, and
Sir Thomas Beecham
made a series of recordings with the Philharmonic for
Columbia Records
during the 1940s.
Leopold Stokowski
and
Dimitri Mitropoulos
were the orchestra’s two conductors in 1949, with Mitropoulos becoming conductor in 1951. Mitropoulos often conducted new music and music that was not well known. In 1957, Mitropoulos and
Leonard Bernstein
served together as Principal Conductors until, in the course of the season, Bernstein was made conductor, becoming the first American-born-and-trained conductor of the Philharmonic.
Leonard Bernstein
was Music Director for 11 seasons. Many new things happened during this time. Two television series were started on CBS: the
Young People's Concerts
and "Leonard Bernstein and the New York Philharmonic." The first of these started in
1958
. It was a new idea and it won every award for educational television. Bernstein continued the orchestra's recordings with Columbia Records until he retired as music director in
1969
. He got lots of composers, especially American composers such as
Aaron Copland
, to write new works for the orchestra.
In 1971
Pierre Boulez
became the first Frenchman to have the job of conductor of the Philharmonic. Boulez had new ideas about music to be performed. He was a composer himself and often performed modern music.
Zubin Mehta
became conductor in
1978
. He, too, conducted a lot of new music.
Kurt Masur
, who had often been conducting the Philharmonic since 1981, became conductor in 1991. During his time he included a series of free Memorial Day Concerts at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine and annual concert tours abroad that included the orchestra's first trip to mainland
China
. His stayed until 2002, and was then given the honorary title “Music Director Emeritus of the Philharmonic”.
On
26 February
2008
the Philharmonic gave a concert in
Pyongyang
in
North Korea
. It was the first time since the end of the
Korean War
in
1953
that there had been an important cultural visit from the United States to North Korea.
[2]
Lorin Maazel
In September 2002, 60 years after conducting the Orchestra at the age of twelve at Lewisohn Stadium,
Lorin Maazel
became conductor of the Philharmonic. In his first subscription week he conducted the first ever performance of
John Adams
'
On the Transmigration of Souls
. This work had been composed in memory of those who lost their lives on
September 11, 2001
. He performed new music as well as music of the well-known composers. He stayed with the orchestra until the end of the 2008-2009 season.