The
Philadelphia Orchestra is a symphony orchestra based in Philadelphia,
Pennsylvania
, in the United States. One of the "
Big Five" American orchestras, it was
founded in 1900.
The orchestra's home is the Kimmel Center
for the Performing Arts
where it performs its subscription concerts in
Verizon Hall.
From 1900
to 2001 the Philadelphia Orchestra gave its concerts at the
Academy of
Music
. The orchestra continues to own the historic
hall and returns there once a year for the Academy of Music's
annual gala concert.
The Philadelphia Orchestra also has a summer
residency at the Saratoga Performing Arts Center
and performs an annual series of concerts at
Carnegie
Hall
.
Currently the orchestra's music director post is vacant. The Chief
Conductor is
Charles Dutoit.
History
Leadership
The orchestra was founded in 1900 by
Fritz
Scheel, who also acted as its first
conductor. In 1907
Karl
Pohlig took over the post and served until 1912. The orchestra
had its beginnings with a small group of musicians led by F.
Cresson Schell (1857-1942), pianist, who was the founding 'Father
of the Philadelphia Orchestra.' "Etude Magazine", March,
1921.
In 1912
Leopold Stokowski became
principal conductor, and brought the orchestra to national
prominence. Under him, the orchestra gained a reputation for great
virtuosity, and developed what is known as the "Philadelphia
Sound." Stokowski left the orchestra in 1941, and did not return as
a guest conductor for nearly 20 years.
In 1936
Eugene Ormandy joined the
organization, and jointly held the post of principal conductor with
Stokowski until 1938 when he took over the role full-time. He
remained with the orchestra for a total of 44 years, after which he
became Conductor Laureate. Ormandy conducted many of the
orchestra's best-known recordings.
He took the orchestra on its historic 1973
tour of the People's Republic of China
, where they were the first Western orchestra to
visit that country in many decades. They were wildly popular
in China, and have since returned for three more successful
tours.
Riccardo Muti became principal guest
conductor of the orchestra in the 1970s, and took over from Ormandy
as Music Director in 1980, serving through 1992. His recordings
with the orchestra included the symphonies of
Ludwig van Beethoven,
Johannes Brahms, and
Alexander Scriabin, for the EMI and
Philips labels.
Wolfgang Sawallisch then
succeeded Muti as Music Director from 1993 to 2003. He made a
number of recordings with the orchestra of music of
Robert Schumann,
Richard Strauss and
Richard Wagner, among other composers, for
the EMI label. However, the orchestra lost its recording contract
with EMI during this time. Toward the end of Sawallisch's tenure,
the orchestra released a self-produced set of recordings of the
Schumann symphonies with Sawallisch conducting. In 2003, Sawallisch
was named Conductor Laureate of the orchestra.
In 2003,
Christoph Eschenbach
became music director. This appointment was controversial because
Eschenbach had not conducted the orchestra in over four years and
there was a perceived lack of personal chemistry between him and
the musicians prior to the appointment. At least one early report
tried to downplay this concern. The orchestra returned to
commercial recordings with Eschenbach, on the Ondine label.
However, in October 2006, Eschenbach and the orchestra announced
that his tenure as music director would end in 2008, at which time
he will have served five years, the shortest tenure as music
director in the history of the Philadelphia Orchestra, along with
Pohlig.
In February 2007, the orchestra named
Charles Dutoit to the newly created posts of
chief conductor and artistic adviser for four seasons, starting in
the fall of 2008 and running through the 2011-2012 season. This
move was made to provide an "artistic bridge" while the orchestra
searched for its eighth music director. Articles from August 2007
have indicated that the orchestra has devised a search process
where each musician in the orchestra will have a say in the choice
of the next Music Director, in contrast to past searches.
Musicians from the orchestra were featured in a documentary film by
Daniel Anker,
Music from the Inside Out, which received
theatrical release and television airings. The film has received
both positive and negative criticism.
The Philadelphia Orchestra's current concertmaster is
David Kim. The Associate Conductor of the
orchestra is Rossen Milanov. The resident chorus of the orchestra
is the Philadelphia Singers.
Firsts
The Philadelphia Orchestra boasts an extraordinary record of media
firsts. It was the first symphony orchestra to make electrical
recordings (in 1925), the first to perform its own commercially
sponsored radio broadcast (in 1929, on NBC), the first to perform
on the soundtrack of a feature film (
The Big Broadcast of
1937), the first to appear on a national television broadcast
(in 1948, on CBS), the first American orchestra to record the
complete Beethoven symphonies on
compact
disc (in 1988), and the first major orchestra to give a live
cybercast of a concert on the Internet (in
1997). On September 21, 2006 the Philadelphia Orchestra became the
first major United States orchestra to sell downloads of their
performances directly from the orchestra's website. While other
American orchestras have downloads of their music on the internet,
the Philadelphia Orchestra says it is the first to offer the
downloads without a distributor.
In other
firsts, the Orchestra made diplomatic history in 1973 when it
became the first American orchestra to tour the People's
Republic of China, performing in Beijing's
Great Hall of
the People
. In 1999, under Wolfgang Sawallisch, it became the first
American orchestra to visit Vietnam
. More
recently, the orchestra appointed
Carol
Jantsch principal tuba as of 2006-2007, and according to the
announcement, it is possible that she is the first full-time female
principal tuba player of an American orchestra.
The Philadelphia Orchestra performs more than 130 concerts during
its winter subscription season from September to May.
In its summer season
spanning June and July, it performs at Philadelphia's outdoor
Mann Center for the Performing
Arts
, followed by a three-week residency in August at
the Saratoga Performing Arts Center in upstate New York
. In July 2007, the Orchestra began a
residency at the Bravo!
Vail Valley Festival in Vail, Colorado
.
Recordings
The
Orchestra's first recordings were made in Camden, New
Jersey
, in 1917, when Leopold
Stokowski led it in performances of two of Brahms' Hungarian Dances for the Victor Talking Machine
Company. The historic first electrical recordings were
also made in Camden, in April 1925, beginning with
Saint-Saëns'
Danse macabre. Then, in 1927, Victor
began recording the Orchestra in the Academy of Music. Stokowski
led them in experimental long-playing, high fidelity, and even
stereophonic sessions in the early 1930s for RCA Victor and Bell
Laboratories. They recorded the soundtrack for
Walt Disney's
Fantasia in multi-track stereophonic
sound in 1940.
Arturo Toscanini made a series of
recordings with the orchestra in 1941 and 1942. Due to some
technical problems with the masters, the recordings were never
issued on 78-rpm discs. Years later, after extensive electronic
editing, all of the recordings were issued by RCA Victor on LP and
CD.
The Orchestra remained with RCA Victor through 1942. Following a
settlement of a recording ban imposed by the
American Federation of
Musicians, the Philadelphia Orchestra switched to
Columbia Records in 1944, recording some of
the dances from
Borodin's
Prince Igor. They returned to RCA Victor in
1968 and made their first digital recording, Bartók's
Concerto for Orchestra, in 1979.
The Orchestra has also recorded for
EMI and
Teldec.
In May 2005, The Philadelphia Orchestra announced a three-year
recording partnership with the Finnish label
Ondine - the Orchestra's first
recording contract in 10 years. The resumption of a regular
recording program was one of Christoph Eschenbach's stated
priorities as music director of The Philadelphia Orchestra. A
number of recordings have been released, since November 2005, to
international acclaim.
Music Directors
- †In 2008 Charles Dutoit
was named chief conductor. Appointment of the
orchestra's music director is expected in 2012.
Further reading
External links
References
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