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100th Birthday Gala By Steve Cohen During its 100-year history, the Philadelphia Orchestra has been indelibly linked with some famous compositions. In fact, it's been the Philadelphia Orchestra that helped make them popular. Let's consider three of those works that are on the program for the 100th birthday concert. Toccata and Fugue in D minor Stokowski attracted controversy when he began orchestrating Bach compositions around 1915 -- just for fun with his musicians at first, then in public performances with the Philadelphia Orchestra. Purists said that Bach's music should be played by the original solo instruments for which he wrote them, not by symphony orchestras. Critic B. H. Haggin said that Stokowski's orchestration was like taking a delicate Rembrandt etching and covering it with gaudy oil colors. But Stokowski fans replied that the etching analogy was a false one. No original was being defaced; it was still available to those who wanted to seek it out, if they had access to an organ, clavichord or what-have-you. They also said that Bach was being done a favor, because the originals were played only in churches and conservatories, while the orchestral transcriptions introduced thousands of new listeners to the music. Not all so-called experts attacked the transcriptions. Some pretty knowledgeable listeners fell in love with them, such as British conductor Malcolm Sargeant, who collected Stokowski's Bach records, and Academy Award-winning director Henry Koster who said: "When I was still in Germany, I bought a record of the Toccata and Fugue played by the Philadelphia Orchestra and I was completely overwhelmed by the beautiful rendition." He came to America in 1936 and later directed a film starring Stokowski, 100 Men and a Girl. Leopold Stokowski was organist at St. James Church, Piccadilly, London, and St. Bartholomew's Church in New York City before making his debut as a conductor in 1908. He became head of the Philadelphia Orchestra four years later, at the age of 30. Imagine this, or any other major symphony, taking a chance today on someone so young! His version of Bach's Toccata and Fugue in D minor was written at Stokowski's home in the Chestnut Hill section of Philadelphia, first performed by the Philadelphia Orchestra in February 1926 and recorded in April 1927. Audience response was so positive that the piece often was repeated during Stokowski's seasons as conductor of the Philadelphia Orchestra. He went on to bring the composition to international audiences during the rest of his long career, which didn't end 'til his death at the age of 95. The man was music director of orchestras in New York, Houston and London and he guest-conducted in countries as diverse as Czechoslovakia, Japan, Russia, Germany, Sweden and Italy. Almost everywhere he went, Stokowski was asked to conduct this arrangement of the Toccata and Fugue. His orchestration has been performed by dozens of other conductors, and recorded by Eric Kunzel with the Cincinnati Pops and by Wolfgang Sawallisch with the Philadelphia Orchestra. The Toccata and Fugue is the opening number in Walt Disney's 1940 animated feature Fantasia, where the Philadelphia Orchestra is heard while we see Stokowski's profile dissolve into a series of surrealistic images representing musical notes. Stokowski wrote about this piece: "It is among the freest in form and expression of Bach's works. The Toccata probably began as an organ improvisation. In [Bach's] lengthy, narrow, high church the thundering harmonies must have echoed long and tempestuously, for this music has a power and majesty that is cosmic. Of all the creations of Bach this is one of the most original. Its inspiration flows unendingly. Its spirit is universal." His arrangement is written for a big orchestra and it's full of lush, vibrant tone colors. Because of his experience as an organist, Stokowski asked the orchestra for massive swelling chords, similar to the effects he used to get when he was at the keyboard, and for hushed trembling whispers by violins, resembling the echoes and reverberations inside a church. The Toccata portion is a series of brilliant flourishes, or fanfares, and the Fugue that follows is a rapid series of overlapping melodies with Bach's themes weaving back and forth among the different sections. Because of the contrasting choirs of the orchestra, you can make out the texture even more clearly than when you hear the composition played on the organ. Note: For years, some critics of Stokowski claimed that he merely put his name on arrangements that actually were written by Philadelphia Orchestra clarinetist Lucien Cailliet, who played in the orchestra from 1918 to 1937 and later had a career as an arranger and orchestrator. I spoke to Cailliet about this in the studios of Temple University's WRTI-FM in 1968. Cailliet told me that in the 1920's he was merely a copyist for Stokowski, who sketched out every passage, telling Cailliet exactly what instruments to use for which notes. In the 1940's, Cailliet published his own, different transcription of the same Bach piece. Piano Concerto No. 2 in C minor, Op. 18 This music will forever be associated with romance. Partly because of pop songs and partly because of Marilyn Monroe. In the 1940's popular musicians borrowed melodies from music by Tchaikovsky, Grieg and others to create Hit Parade best sellers. But only one classical composition ever had multiple tunes taken from it. This Rachmaninoff had not one, not two, but three best-selling pop singles. Perry Como made a hit of "Full Moon and Empty Arms," while other crooners popularized "I Will Bring You Music (as swiftly as the dove my song will fly.)" Then, in 1976, Eric Carmen landed on the pop charts with a melody from the second movement which he adapted as "All By Myself (Don't wanna be all by myself.)" Rachmaninoff surely knew how to spin long, gorgeous melodies that went on and on, spiraling into unexpected additional beauty. Broadway composers Jerome Kern and Harold Arlen, each in his own way, tried to match Rachmaninoff's long-spun melodies. In MGM's 1932 film, Grand Hotel, Rachmaninoff music is used to symbolize the love of the baron and the dancer, John Barrymore and Greta Garbo. Later, Rachmaninoff's music was featured in the films Somewhere in Time, Groundhog Day, and the biography of pianist David Helfgott, Shine. Rachmaninoff's style was mimicked by film composers such as Miklos Rozsa, Dimitri Tiomkin and Victor Young. Rozsa described Young, the composer of For Whom The Bell Tolls: "He wrote in the Broadway-cum-Rachmaninoff idiom which was then the accepted Hollywood style." William Darby and Jack DuBois, authors of American Film Music, say that Rozsa himself borrowed from the Russian master in his scores for Ben Hur, Spellbound, and many other films: "Melodic and sequential patterns, especially from Rachmaninoff, are used liberally." Rachmaninoff's own music -- this very concerto, in fact -- is featured in the 1955 movie The Seven Year Itch. But beyond that, Marilyn Monroe actually talks about how she loves the Rachmaninoff Second Piano Concerto. The plot shows a rumpled, middle-aged married man, Tom Ewell, tempted by his sexy upstairs neighbor, Monroe. He daydreams of seducing her by sitting at a piano and playing the Rachmaninoff Piano Concerto No. 2. The music fills the soundtrack as Ewell's erotic daydream occupies the screen. This film, and the Dudley Moore-Bo Derek 10 a few years later, stand as cinema's two greatest monuments to the power of classical music for arousing passion. Born in Russia, Rachmaninoff inherited his family's estate in Novgorod, only to lose it in the Russian Communist revolution of 1917. He fled to the United States where he had been concertizing for a decade. He denounced the communist regime, of course, and lived the remainder of his life on Riverside Drive in Manhattan, then in Beverly Hills, California, where he died of cancer just before his 70th birthday. In 1933 he wrote: "I have never been able to make up my mind as to what was my true calling -- that of composer, pianist, or conductor. I am constantly troubled by the misgiving that, in venturing into too many fields, I may have failed to make the best use of my life." The concerto has special significance in Philadelphia, because the composer played it himself so many times with this orchestra. (Though its first Philadelphia performance had Ossip Gabrilowitsch, Mark Twain's son-in-law, as soloist in 1916.) Rachmaninoff said that the Philadelphia was his favorite orchestra and he recorded all four of his piano concertos with that band. The last major works of his career all had their world premieres with the Philadelphia Orchestra: his Piano Concerto #4 (1927,) Rhapsody On a Theme of Paganini (1934,) Symphony #3 (1936) and Symphonic Dances (1941.) The composer was at the piano for the premieres of the Concerto and Rhapsody. Rachmaninoff appeared often at Philadelphia's Academy of Music as solo recitalist and as conductor or pianist with the orchestra, 48 separate concerts, at home and on tour, up to his last appearance in 1942 at Ann Arbor, Michigan, performing this very piece. Rachmaninoff was, literally, a towering figure. He stood over six feet tall. People said he had "hands of steel" and he demonstrated a big sound as well as fleet technique, whether playing Beethoven, Chopin or his own pieces. What wouldn't you give to hear a recording of Mozart or Beethoven playing one of their own piano concertos? It never happened, of course. But Rachmaninoff recorded his most popular piece, the Second Piano Concerto, with Stokowski and the Philadelphians in 1929. The first and third movements have lush melodies with thundering piano chords, while the middle movement is a slow, soft, dreamy adagio. Because its tunes were so immensely popular, a backlash reaction set in and modern pianists avoided it for several years. But the great, and opinionated, Arthur Rubinstein once told this writer that the Rach 2 was "a really good piece of music. Much better than the Tchaikovsky concerto." The Sorcerer's Apprentice This piece was played first by the Philadelphia Orchestra in 1910. But the connection between composition and orchestra really began two years after Dukas's death when Stokowski recorded it for an RCA Victor album with the Philadelphians in 1937. It became one of the best-selling albums of that depression decade, and it came to the attention of a certain movie-maker in Hollywood. At that stage in his career, the conductor was taking vacations from the Philadelphia Orchestra to visit California, where he explored the possibilities of symphonic music in films. One studio wooed him with the idea of playing the role of Richard Wagner in a bio-pic about that composer. Another used him to conduct one of his Bach arrangements as a cameo. Then, in 1938, he played the role of a conductor in Universal's film, 100 Men and a Girl. In his spare time, Stoky had intimate trysts with Greta Garbo, Joan Crawford and other actresses. One evening Stokowski was dining alone in a Hollywood restaurant when a man walked over to his table and said: "I'm Walt Disney. I admire your work, and I have the idea of doing Sorcerer's Apprentice as a short with Mickey Mouse." According to Stokowski, "Disney went on: 'Would you like to do the music and I'll do the pictorial part?' So we did that together and when we were about half through, Disney said to me one day, 'You know, I like this so much I'd like to make a long picture bringing in other things.' And that's how Fantasia began." The Sorcerer's Apprentice tells the story, in music, of a lazy apprentice who's supposed to be fetching water. He tries on his master's magical hat and charms a broom into doing his work for him. But rapidly-multiplying brooms fetch so much water that soon the room is engulfed, as a flood swirls dizzyingly around. The sorcerer returns, grabs back his cap and makes the waters subside, while the apprentice slinks away. In the Disney version, the sorcerer gives Mickey Mouse a kick in the rear in time with four quick chords at the end. Then Mickey is shown approaching the live Stokowski, tugging the ends of his formal tails and saying: "Thank you, Mr. Stokowski," to which the maestro replies: "Thank you, Mickey." This segment of Fantasia is so popular, and so respected by musicians, that Disney Studios chose it for inclusion in the new Fantasia 2000 which, aside from this section, contains new music and animations. The Sorcerer's Apprentice is known to millions of moviegoers because of those films. But even after Stokowski left the Orchestra, the piece remained extremely popular with the Philadelphians. Ormandy, Muti and Sawallisch have conducted it nearly 100 times. (Copyright 2000) Steve Cohen |
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