Leopold Stokowski and the Philadelphia Orchestra

Their Story and Their Recordings 1917 to 1940

Among the great conductors of the twentieth century, Leopold Stokowski had a unique and fascinating career.

Unique in the variety and quantity of his performances and recordings of music, and especially of new music, from composers of all musical persuasions.

Unique in his role in disseminating music to the public and in particular, the American public.  This was done  through Stokowski's innovative repertoire, innovative concert formats, youth concerts, and pioneering broadcast techniques.  This dissemination of music was further benefited by Stokowski's flair for promoting himself and his music and by the popularity of his stream of 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

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.

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.