Leopold Stokowski and the Philadelphia OrchestraTheir Story and Their Recordings 1917 to 1940
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The Stokowski Legacy
Version française
Among the great conductors of the twentieth century, Leopold Stokowski had a
unique and fascinating career.
Unique in his role in disseminating music to the public and in particular,
the American public (most of whom in 1920, before the advent of radio and
orchestral gramophone recordings, had never heard a symphony). This was
accomplished through Stokowski's innovative repertoire, innovative concert
formats, youth concerts, pioneering broadcast techniques and especially
by his recordings. This dissemination of music was aided by
Stokowski's flair for promoting himself and his music and by the popularity
of his stream of great recordings from 1917 to 1977.
Unique in his involvement with the development of recorded sound.
Stokowski
was involved in orchestral recording from the acoustic
to the quadraphonic eras, and in pioneering efforts
in High Fidelity and stereophonic recording with the Bell Laboratories.
1917 Acoustic recording of the Brahms Hungarian Dance no 5 and
1974 Quadraphonic recording of works of Tchaikovsky
Click here to go to the Navigation Table for www.stokowski.org
Themes of this stokowski.org Website
This site concentrates on Stokowski's recordings as a
witness not only of Stokowski's career, but also of the evolution of sound
recording during his era. This site further benefits from the extensive
scholarship and efforts of a number of researchers and amateurs of the work of
Stokowski, so generously shared with all of us who enjoy Stokowski's legacy.
Primary development of this site will be first, the acoustic recordings of
Stokowski and the Philadelphians from 1917 to 1924, and second, the complete
legacy of electrical recordings of Stokowski and the Philadelphia Orchestra
from 1925 to 1940. Later, I hope to add examples of Stokowski's art
that are less easily found or not found at all from current CD sources.
The music of Stokowski and the Philadelphia Orchestra will
include as many mp3 recordings
of this Stokowski / Philadelphia repertoire as will fit in the storage of the
stokowski.org site. These music tracks will allow those interested to hear Stokowski's many
great recordings. In addition, they will, hopefully, encourage
visitors to this site to purchase some of the
many excellent CDs available reproducing the historic Stokowski legacy.
A note on the mp3 files included in this site: I have not included material
that has been published in the many excellent CDs containing restorations of the
Stokowski - Philadelphia Orchestra recordings (about which you can read
more at
CDs of Leopold Stokowski and the Philadelphia Orchestra
). The
reason is that I would not like to do anything which might potentially
reduce the sales of these efforts by the leading restoration experts.
Also, I would not wish to reduce the (probably already small)
sales of these recordings by the leading publishers who have commissioned the
restoration of these recordings.
However, the corollary of this decision is that my examples of the recordings
of Stokowski and the Philadelphia Orchestra are not sonically as good as those
produced by the leading restoration experts. For example, I have used sparingly
some software to de-click recordings, but found this degrades
the orchestra sound in some cases. Professional systems such as CEDAR
are too expensive for this project, so the recordings here generally have a higher
level of 'crackle' and clicks than the best commercial transcriptions. However, I
believe the Stokowski material on this site from my sources and from my friends
is of a level which likely you can appreciate Stokowski's art and hopefully enjoy
the performances and the music, which give pleasure today, even
ninety years later.
A Note on listening to the Stokowski recordings
The recordings in this site are files in mp3 format (mostly,
128 kbps) encoded from my recordings. Links to the mp3
files are located in two places:
First - in the page covering the year of the recording.
For example, links to a 1926 recording are found in the page:
1926 - Stokowski - Philadelphia Orchestra Recordings
Second - in the Chronological Discography page.
For example, links to a 1926 recording are also found in the
electrical recordings chronological discography page:
Chronological Discography of Electrical Recordings
This Chronological Discography page lists
all the electrical recordings from 1925 to
1940 made by the Philadelphia Orchestra conducted by Leopold
Stokowski and issued by Victor, including of
course the 1926 recordings. For each recording listed
in the Discography table, there is a 'MP3' link on the
right-hand side which also will download the recording.
The mp3 files in this site are mostly encoded at 128 kbps. This means that
the files are of different sizes, according to the length of
the music. For example, the second Stokowski electrical recording, the
April 29, 1925 Borodin ‘Polovetzki Dances’ is small (3.6 Mb). In contrast,
the 1929 Le Sacre du Printemps file is large. Le Sacre part 1 is 14 Mb
and Le Sacre part 2 is 16 Mb.
Consequently, a large file will take a longer time to
download, depending on your internet connection speed.
Please keep this in mind when you click to listen to (which means
to download) a particularly music file. You may click
the link to the music file, but need to wait a number of
seconds or even minutes to listen to the file.
Organization of the www.stokowski.org site
The contents of this site are organized below into four sections:
1. Stokowski - Philadelphia Orchestra acoustic
recordings from 1917 to 1924
2. Stokowski - Philadelphia Orchestra
electrical recordings from 1925 to 1940.
3. Information about the recordings and
other material about Stokowski and the Philadelphia Orchestra.
4. Another project of this site is a biographical
listing of the Musicians of Leading United States Orchestras.
In researching the 'Principal' or 'solo' musicians of the
Philadelphia Orchestra, I was surprised to find how little information
is available about the fascinating story of their careers. Therefore,
I have included pages which list the Principal musicians of several
leading orchestras from their beginnings, and also pages that seek to
list
In the paragraphs below, you will see links to all the pages
of this site featuring the acoustic recordings, the electrical
recordings, and other Stokowski material, plus the pages on
the musicians of leading US orchestras. Simply click on
the links below.
Click here to go to the Navigation Table for www.stokowski.org
1. Stokowski Acoustic Recordings.
From its first recording, Leopold Stokowski and the Philadelphia
orchestra inaugurated a period of recording made
possible by the development of the acoustic
recording process, invented by Edison, and further
developed by the Victor Talking Machine Company.
To explore this era, click below
to go to the appropriate web page:
The Development of Acoustic Recording
1917 - 1924 The Acoustic Recordings of Leopold Stokowski - Philadelphia Orchestra
1917 - first 78 RPM Acoustic Victor recordings of Leopold Stokowski - Philadelphia Orchestra
Leopold Stokowski - Philadelphia Orchestra Other Acoustic Recordings from 1917 and 1919
Leopold Stokowski - Philadelphia Orchestra Other Acoustic Recordings of 1920 and 1921
Leopold Stokowski - Philadelphia Orchestra Other Acoustic Recordings from 1922 - 1924
Leopold Stokowski - Philadelphia Orchestra Acoustic Recordings of Russian Music
1919 - 1924
Leopold Stokowski - Philadelphia Orchestra French Acoustic Recordings 1920 to 1924
Leopold Stokowski - Philadelphia Orchestra Wagner Acoustic Recordings of 1921 and 1924
Leopold Stokowski - Philadelphia Orchestra Tchaikovsky Acoustic Recordings 1921 - 1924
Leopold Stokowski - Serge Rachmaninoff and the Philadelphia Orchestra - 1924
2. Stokowski Electrical Recordings.
Beginning in 1925, Stokowski and the Philadelphians made the first electrical
recordings of a symphony orchestra in the United States (and, in fact, the first
in the world). Click on the links below to read about and hear these
superb and historic recordings:
Bell Laboratories and the Development of Electrical Recording
Licensing the Bell - Westrex Electrical Recording System
1925 - First Electrical Recording - Leopold Stokowski - Philadelphia Orchestra
1925 - Stokowski - Philadelphia Orchestra Other Electrical Recordings
1926 - Stokowski - Philadelphia Orchestra Recordings
1927 Leopold Stokowski and the Philadelphia Orchestra
More 1927 Leopold Stokowski - Philadelphia Orchestra Recordings
1928 - Stokowski Philadelphia Recordings
1929 - Stokowski Philadelphia Recordings
1930 - Stokowski Philadelphia Recordings
1931 - Stokowski Philadelphia Recordings
1932 - Stokowski Philadelphia Recordings
1933 - Stokowski Philadelphia Recordings
1934 - Stokowski Philadelphia Recordings
More 1934 - Stokowski Philadelphia Recordings
1935 - Stokowski Philadelphia Recordings
1936 - Stokowski Philadelphia Recordings
1937 - Stokowski Philadelphia Recordings
1939 - 1940 - Stokowski Philadelphia Recordings
3. Other Pages about Stokowski
In addition, there are a number of pages of information related to the recordings of
Leopold Stokowski and his recordings on this site.
This information is being updated frequently,
and just added is an appreciation by the music scholar and Stokowski expert
Edward Johnson writing about:
Leopold Stokowski and British Music
Edward Johnson also writes about the long association between:
Leopold Stokowski and Ralph Vaughan Williams
More Stokowski information is included in the pages below. Click the link
below to read and hear more about Stokowski and his legacy:
Interviews with Leopold Stokowski
Leopold Stokowski Orchestrations
Leopold Stokowski, Harvey Fletcher and the Bell Laboratories Experimental Recordings
Masters of the Modern Restoration of Historic Disks
Leopold Stokowski - Philadelphia Orchestra Chronological Discography
Camden Church Studio - Victor Talking Machine Recording Location
Leopold Stokowski - Philadelphia Orchestra Recording in the Academy of Music Philadelphia
Further Material on Leopold Stokowski and the Philadelphia Orchestra
CDs of Leopold Stokowski and the Philadelphia Orchestra
Leopold Stokowski - Philadelphia Orchestra Bibliography, Sources and Credits
Also newly added is a
Fritz Reiner Discography which seeks to documennt all the commerial
and private recordings of Fritz Reiner.
4. Musicians of Major American Orchestras
Since there seems to be a surprising lack of historical information about
the principal musicians of the Philadelphia Orchestra, and in general
the principals of the other leading symphony orchestras of the United
States, I have started, out of my own interest, to try to compile
brief biographies of the musicians of the major orchestras listed
below. Often, it is difficult even to form an accurate historical
listing of the first-chair musicians of the orchestra sections, let alone
assembling brief biographical information.
Below are links to the web pages covering the named orchestras.
Each orchestra is organized into two different listings:
- A listing of all the Musicians of the Orchestra since its inception.
This list includes the names, country and date of birth and death, instruments, positions
and dates of service of all known permanent musicians of the orchestra from its beginning.
- A listing of the Principal or "solo" musicians of
the Orchestra
This is a listing of all the Principal musicians of the Orchestra,
chronologically during their histories, with a brief biographical sketches
and photographs.
Your added or corrected information on any of these musicians would be welcome simply by contacting this site as shown at the foot of this page . A leading source of for articles on great artists and rare recordings of the past; histories of record companies; interviews and CD / DVD reviews, and more is Classical Recordings Quarterly (formerly Classic Record Collector). Please visit them by by clicking here. (http://crq.org.uk/)
Click here to go to the Navigation Table for www.stokowski.org 1 Leopold Stokowski portrait by Elias Goldensky circa 1923
If you have any comments or questions about this Leopold Stokowski site,
please e-mail me (Larry Huffman) at e-mail address:
leopold.stokowski@gmail.com
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