Leopold Stokowski was named the Houston Symphony’s music director in 1955.
This piece appeared in the Houston Chronicle on May 1, 1955. The headline and words are reprinted as they ran then.
The future of orchestral muscle in Houston will rest, beginning next fall, in the long, glamorous hands of one of this century’s stunning personalities and one of the two most publicized men of music — Leopold Stokowski.
With the recent naming of this conductor as music director of the Houston Symphony for the next three years, some 270,000 citizens who actually attend the orchestra’s concerts each season, and thousands more who follow it over KTRH broadcasts, have been wondering: What may we expect of Stokowski?
At 73, he is in the last active quarter of life, but the genius of a conductor seems to have very little to do with his age. Arturo Toscanini, the only other conductor able to compete with Stokowski in international publicity, retired from the NBC podium last year at the remarkable age of 87.
Stokowski’s appearance is youthful, his energies still amazing to those around him. His restive mind still searches for new fields to conquer, new ways to improve the music he makes, or to broaden the sphere of his influences through music.
The title music director, which he will hold in connection with the Houston Symphony Society, is an all encompassing one. He will be the mentor of this city’s orchestra which, after two seasons of comparative instability under guest conductors, needs a firm hand. Moreover, one could not imagine the tensely strung Stokowski agreeing to serve under any circumstances in which he was not in total control of the music and its effects.
This is an important factor, because we may then expect from Stokowski some very particular things, based upon his own lifelong devotions and preferences.
He has an active interest in young people and holds the belief (sometimes contested by schoolteachers) that the age range, 4 to 11, is the best time to interest children in music.
The orchestra has already pursued a vigorous student concert program, but this, too will change probably, with Stokowski. Once in Philadelphia, when he presented Saint-Saëns’ “Carnival of Animals,” He trooped a few lively specimens from the zoo across the stage just to make things more graphic for the young minds. He will probably conduct a few of the student concerts here himself, and has been known to turn around and give his young audience choice comments as he goes.
Stokowski’s interest in choral works for Houston is already known. We may expect that he will perform two contemporary choral pieces with the Houston Symphony next season. One called “Symphony of Peace,” By Andrzej Panufnik, an escape from Red Poland and considered one of Poland’s great creative talents, employs women’s, men’s and children’s choruses, plus soloists. The other is “Carmina Burana” by contemporary German composer Carl Orff, performed by Stokowski earlier this season in Boston. And there will be other exciting choral experiences in the Music Hall under Stokowski’s guidance. We must remember that here is the conductor who introduced the gigantic Eight Symphony of Mahler to Philadelphia. It called for a large orchestra, a chorus of 1000 voices, and thus the expenditure of an additional $14,000. The occasion was a historical success and was said to be instrumental in proving the Philadelphia orchestra an ensemble of more than local significance.
There will be evenings of special program interest: Groupings of works not generally heard together. And listeners will have Stokowski’s never-falling interest in the contemporary composer, too, to reckon with. Imagine what importance this great exponent of contemporary composition can bring to the annual Texas Composers Commission award, and the works he will play in Houston premieres.
Though in his first season here, he will personally conduct only half the subscription concerts, he has worked closely with the management in selecting such guest conductors as Sir Thomas Beecham, Andre Kostelanetz, Max Rudolf and Bernard Hermann to lead the ensemble when he will have to be away.
He is fussy about guest artists, too, and has O.K.d them only after close scrutiny of the prospective list. Among them his first season will be pianist Gina Bachauer, Ellen Ballon, Robert Casadesus, and the Texasborn Van Cliburn; violinists Szymon Goldberg and Erica Morini; tenor Richard Tucker, and guitarist Andrés Segovia.
The various means of projecting music and musical effects have always captivated the interest of this conductor. His work in film is evidence enough, but more dramatic has been his profound research in the science of electronics as connected with music. He is credited, along with technicians at RCA-Victor, with development of certain of today’s recording techniques. His disks of everything from Bach — in his own brilliant transcriptions for orchestra — to Stravinsky have been classic best sellers. And the Houston orchestra is expected to begin making records with Stokowski next season. He believes in recording not in dead studios but in live concert halls where every acoustical quirk is known and understood. We should watch, then, for Stokowski to “case” the Music Hall, rearrange the seating of his musicians, fuss about the placement of mikes and the tilt of sound boards or acoustical shells.
We may expect a continuous change of location for the orchestra personnel in concerts, and a series of rehearsals conducted with stern unsmiling attention to one passage or another, always reaching for the effect that only “Stokey” with his exceptional flair for dramatics and tone can conceive.
It is understood that Stokowski is not coming to Houston to ride out a marital rift (he was recently separated from heiress Gloria Vanderbilt), or to recoup any financial fortunes (he is reported to have received $240,000 in one season while conductor of the Philadelphia orchestra). He has always been a restless creator. Wearying of an undertaking only when he had given it the best he had. Thus, after 29 years at the head of the Philadelphia orchestra, he stepped down in 1941, to the astonishment of most and against the wishes of many.
Stokowski sees in Houston an orchestra of proven timbre, with high intent behind it, but one severely in need of a master builder. He may see in Houston too, a vigorous, healthy city ready to appreciate his own surging imagination and vigor. Possibly, too, he sees Houston as a likely place for a man to spend time with his two young sons who, for all their sophisticated background to date, are enthralled by the Western world of cowboys and Indians.
This coming together of a man of such widespread interest and proven capabilities with a city that has shown itself eager for brilliance on the podium may go down in musical history as one of the significant pacts in the fabled story of American music. Three exciting and adventuresome seasons will detail just what it will mean to Houston.
UPDATE
When Stokowski’s hiring was announced, Ann Holmes wrote that he had the potential to make “this orchestra one of the most important in this country.”
He went on to attract “international recognition by commissioning new works and making recordings,” according to the symphony’s website. It notes, for example, that he led the Houston Symphony in the world premiere performance of Alan Hovhaness’ Symphony No. 2, “Mysterious Mountain” and started the first of his recording sessions with the symphony on Capitol Records with Glière’s Symphony No. 3 in B minor.
He stayed beyond his initial three-year contract.
In 2013, the Chronicle wrote about four CDs of reissued recordings of his work in Houston, calling them a “testament to the glorious reign of maestro Leopold Stokowski.” Two are mostly devoted to the music of Richard Wagner.
“It’s in the Wagner selections, especially, that Stokowski’s freewheeling conducting style can be clearly heard. In his hands, the music takes on a fluid quality — and the Houston Symphony sounds lush and bursting with energy.”
The story says that as in Philadelphia, Stokowski would find himself at odds with the symphony’s board, as some felt he was programming too much modern music. Tensions came to a head in the 1961-1962 session, the story says, citing “Houston Symphony: Celebrating a Century,” a book by former Houston Post critic Carl Cunningham.
That was when Stokowski tried to present a guest appearance by Shirley Verrett, a black opera signer. When two white choirs declined to participate, the symphony retracted its invitation to her, Cunningham wrote in the book.
In 2003, the New York Times wrote about Verrett and her autobiography, “I Never Walked Alone.’’ The story mentions Stokowski’s attempt to hire Verrett, saying: “The orchestra’s board would not sanction a black soloist. Deeply embarrassed, Stokowski arranged for Ms. Verrett to perform Falla’s ‘Amor Brujo’ with the Philadelphia Orchestra, a performance that resulted in a splendid recording.”
When Stokowski resigned, he said he wanted to be closer to his sons in New York after a divorce from his fifth wife, Gloria Vanderbilt, according to Cunningham’s book.
In 1961, Sir John Barbirolli became principal conductor for the Houston Symphony.