Leopold Anthony Stokowski (April 18, 1882–September 13, 1977) was a British orchestral conductor and arranger, who was born and raised in London, England, the son of an English-born cabinet-maker of Polish heritage, Kopernik Joseph Boleslav Stokowski, and his Irish-born wife Annie-Marion Stokowski, née Moore, and named after his Polish-born grandfather Leopold, who died in the English county of Surrey on January 13, 1879, at the age of 49.. There is some mystery surrounding his early life. Stokowski studied at the Royal College of Music, where he first enrolled in 1896 at the age of thirteen, making him one of the youngest students to do so, sang in the choir of the St. Marylebone Church, and later became the Assistant Organist to Sir Walford Davies at The Temple Church. At the age of 16, Stokowski was elected to a membership in the Royal College of Organists. In 1900, Stokowski formed the choir of St. Mary’s Church, Charing Cross Road, where he trained the choirboys and played the organ. In 1902, Stokowski was appointed the organist and choir director of St. James’s Church, Piccadilly. He also attended The Queen’s College, Oxford, where he earned a Bachelor of Music degree in 1903.
In 1905, Stokowski began work in New York City as the organist and choir director of St. Bartholomew’s Church but resigned this position in his quest of a career as an orchestra conductor. Moving to Paris for additional study in music conducting, he heard that the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra would be needing a new conductor when it returned from a long sabbatical. In 1908, Stokowski began a campaign to win this conducting position, writing multiple letters to Mrs. Christian R. Holmes, the orchestra’s president, and traveling all the way to Cincinnati, Ohio, for a personal interview. Stokowski won out over the other applicants, and he took up his conducting duties in the fall of 1909. That was the year of his official conducting debut in Paris with the Colonne Orchestra on May 12, 1909, when Stokowski accompanied his bride-to-be, the pianist Olga Samaroff, in Tchaikovsky’s Piano Concerto No. 1. Stokowski’s conducting debut in London took place the following week on May 18, with the New Symphony Orchestra at Queen’s
Stokowski served as the permanent conductor in Cincinnati until1912, when he turned in his resignation which was accepted on April 12, 1912. Two months later, Stokowski was appointed the director of the Philadelphia Orchestra, and he made his conducting debut in Philadelphia on October 11, 1912. Stokowski made his very first recordings, with the Philadelphia Orchestra, for the Victor Talking Machine Company in October 1917, beginning with two of Brahms’ Hungarian Dances. While he was director of the Philadelphia Orchestra, he was largely responsible for convincing Mary Louise Curtis Bok to set up the Curtis Institute of Music (October 13, 1924) in Philadelphia. He helped with recruiting faculty and hired many of their graduates. On the musical side, Stokowski nurtured the orchestra and shaped the “Stokowski” sound, or what became known as the “Philadelphia Sound.” He also became known for modifying the orchestrations of some of the works that he conducted, as had been a standard practice for conductors prior to the second half of the twentieth Century. In 1926 he was married to Johnson & Johnson heiress Evangeline Love Brewster Johnson, an artist and aviatrix. In 1933, Stokowski started “Youth Concerts” for younger audiences, which are still a tradition in Philadelphia and many other American cities, and fostered youth music programs. Stokowski shared principal conducting duties with Eugene Ormandy from 1936 to 1941.
In 1939, Stokowski collaborated with Walt Disney to create the motion picture for which he is best known: Fantasia. He conducted all the music (with the exception of a “jam session” in the middle of the film) and included his own orchestrations for the Toccata and Fugue in D minor and Night on Bald Mountain/Ave Maria segments. Stokowski had made his own orchestration of Mussorgsky’s Night on Bald Mountain by adapting Rimsky-Korsakov’s orchestration and making it sound, in some places, similar to Mussorgsky’s original. In the film Fantasia, to conform to the Disney artists’ story-line, depicting the battle between good and evil, the ending of Night on Bald Mountain segued into the beginning of Schubert’s Ave Maria. Stokowski even got to talk to (and shake hands with) Mickey Mouse on screen, although he would later say with a smile that Mickey Mouse got to shake hands with him. When his Philadelphia Orchestra contract expired, Stokowski immediately formed the All-American Youth Orchestra, its players’ ages ranging from 18 to 25. It toured South America in 1940 and North America in 1941 and was met with rave reviews. The AAYO was disbanded when America entered the war, and plans for another extensive tour in 1942 were abandoned.
During this time, Stokowski also became chief conductor of the NBC Symphony Orchestra on a three-year contract (1941–1944). In 1944, on the recommendation of Mayor Fiorello La Guardia, Stokowski helped form the New York City Symphony Orchestra, which they intended would make music accessible for middle-class workers. In 1945 he married railroad heiress Gloria Vanderbilt (born 1924), an artist and fashion designer. Also in 1945, he founded the Hollywood Bowl Symphony Orchestra. The orchestra lasted for two years before it was disbanded for live concerts, but not for recordings, which continued well into the 1960s. He continued to appear frequently with the Los Angeles Philharmonic, both at the Hollywood Bowl and other venues. In 1946 Stokowski became a chief Guest Conductor of the New York Philharmonic. From 1947 to 1953 Stokowski recorded for RCA Victor with a specially assembled “ad hoc” band of players drawn principally from the New York Philharmonic and NBC Symphony. The LPs were labelled as being played by “Leopold Stokowski and his Symphony Orchestra.” Then in 1950, when Dimitri Mitropoulos was appointed Chief Conductor of the NYPO, Stokowski began a new international career which commenced in 1951 with a nation-wide tour of England, establishing a pattern of guest-conducting abroad during the summer months while spending the winter seasons conducting in the USA. This scheme was to hold good for the next 20 years during which Stokowski conducted many of the world’s greatest orchestras, simultaneously making recordings with them for various labels. Stokowski returned to the NBC Symphony Orchestra in 1954 for a series of recording sessions for RCA. After the NBC Symphony Orchestra was disbanded as the official ensemble of the NBC radio network, it was re-formed as the Symphony of the Air with Stokowski as notional Music Director, and as such performed many concerts and made recordings from 1954 until 1963.
From 1955 to 1961, Stokowski was also the Music Director of the Houston Symphony Orchestra. In 1960, Stokowski made one of his infrequent appearances in the opera house, when he conducted Giacomo Puccini’s Turandot at the New York Metropolitan. In 1962, at the age of 80, Stokowski founded the American Symphony Orchestra. One of his notable British guest conducting engagements in the 1960s was the first Proms performance of Gustav Mahler’s Second Symphony, Resurrection. He continued to conduct in public for a few more years, but failing health forced him to only make recordings. An eyewitness said that Stokowski often conducted sitting down in his later years; sometimes, as he became involved in the performance, he would stand up and conduct with remarkable energy. Stokowski gave his last world premiere in 1973 when, at the age of 91, he conducted Havergal Brian’s 28th Symphony in a BBC radio broadcast with the New Philharmonia Orchestra. His last public appearance in the UK took place at the Royal Albert Hall, London, on May 14, 1974. His very last public appearance took place during the 1975 Vence Music Festival in the South of France, when on July 22he conducted the Rouen Chamber Orchestra in several of his Bach transcriptions. In 1976, he signed a recording contract with CBS Records that would have kept him active until he was 100 years old. However, he died of a heart attack the following year in Nether Wallop, Hampshire, at the age of 95.
One of the leading conductors of the early and mid-20th Century, Leopold Stokowski is best known for his long association with the Philadelphia Orchestra and for appearing in the film Fantasia. He was especially noted for his free-hand conducting style that spurned the traditional baton and for obtaining a characteristically sumptuous sound from the orchestras he directed. He conducted the music for and appeared in several Hollywood films, including Disney’s Fantasia, and was a lifelong champion of contemporary composers, giving many premieres of new music during his 60-year conducting career. Stokowski, who made his official conducting debut in 1909, appeared in public for the last time in 1975 but continued making recordings until June 1977, a few months before his death at the age of 95. The following work which was adapted and partially arranged by Stokowski is included in my collection:
Walt Disney’s Fantasia: Original Soundtrack Score (adapted and arranged).
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