NBC Symphony Orchestra
This article needs additional citations for verification. (May 2013) |
NBC Symphony Orchestra | |
---|---|
Founded | 1937 |
Disbanded | 1954 1963 (renamed) | (original)
Later name | Symphony of the Air |
Location | NBC Studio 8H and Carnegie Hall, New York City |
Principal conductor | Arturo Toscanini |
The NBC Symphony Orchestra was a
The orchestra's first broadcast was on November 13, 1937, and it continued until disbanded in April 1954. A new ensemble, independent of the network, called the Symphony of the Air, followed. It was made up of former members of the NBC Symphony Orchestra and performed from 1954 to 1963, particularly under Leopold Stokowski.
History
Tom Lewis, in the Organization of American Historians Magazine of History, described NBC's plan for cultural programming and the origin of the NBC Symphony:
- David Sarnoff, who had first proposed the "radio music box" in 1916 so that listeners might enjoy "concerts, lectures, music, recitals", felt that the medium was failing to do this. By 1937, RCA had recovered enough from the effects of the Depression for it to make a dramatic commitment to cultural programming. Sarnoff proposed to create a radio orchestra and hire Arturo Toscanini to conduct it. Toscanini had recently resigned from the New York Philharmonic at age 69 and was considering retirement; Sarnoff sent Samuel Chotzinoff as an emissary to Italy and he managed to convince the wary Toscanini to accept Sarnoff's offer. On Christmas night, 1937, the NBC Symphony Orchestra gave its first performance with Toscanini in an entirely refurbished studio at NBC located in the RCA Building. "The National Broadcasting Company is an American business organization. It has employees and stockholders. It serves their interests best when it serves the public best." That Christmas night, and whenever the NBC orchestra played over the next 17 years, he was right.[2]
Sarnoff devoted considerable effort and resources to create an orchestra of the first rank for Toscanini and NBC.
The orchestra's first broadcast concert aired on November 13, 1937, under the direction of Monteux. Toscanini conducted ten concerts that first season, making his NBC debut on December 25, 1937. In addition to weekly broadcasts on the NBC Red and Blue networks, the NBC Symphony Orchestra made many recordings for
For the new ensemble, many NBC staff musicians were auditioned by Rodzinski and Chotzinoff, along with about 700 members of other orchestras or chamber-music groups; 31 NBC players were retained in the new orchestra. The American Federation of Musicians union minimum for such staff work at NBC was $105 weekly, but many instrumentalists were paid considerably more. Fortune magazine disclosed that the NBC's extra cost for all the above-scale musicians, plus Toscanini’s salary—as compared with a typical staff conductor’s—amounted to about $250K more than an orchestra of union-scale players under typical staff conductors.[6]
Leopold Stokowski served as principal conductor from 1941 to 1944 on a three-year contract following a dispute between Toscanini and NBC. During this time Toscanini continued to lead the orchestra in a series of public benefit concerts for war relief. He returned as Stokowski's co-conductor for the 1942–43 and 1943–44 seasons, resuming full control thereafter. Upon Toscanini's retirement in the spring of 1954, NBC officially disbanded the orchestra, much to Toscanini's distress, though it continued for several years independent of NBC, as the Symphony of the Air. Toscanini's final broadcast concert with the orchestra took place at Carnegie Hall on April 4, 1954, and he conducted the orchestra for the last time during RCA Victor recording sessions held June 3 and 5, 1954.
Musicians
Some notable musicians who were members of the orchestra include violinists
Not all of the NBC Symphony performers were under full-time contracts to NBC. In the early 1950s, for example, only about 55 of these musicians were salaried; the rest were hired under per-service contracts (in line with Local 802 American Federation of Musicians wage scales) to bring the orchestra's performing and recording strength up to the 85 to 100 seen in period photographs and video footage. Even for the salaried members, NBC Symphony duties constituted barely half of their work obligations for NBC; these musicians played in orchestras for other NBC radio and television programs, with many of the wind players also serving with the Cities Service "Band of America" conducted by Paul Lavalle.[8]
Sponsorship
In the first several seasons the NBC Symphony broadcasts were "sustaining" programs, meaning that they were paid for and presented by NBC itself. In later years the broadcasts were commercially sponsored, primarily by
Recordings
RCA Victor released the orchestra's recordings on its flagship
The complete series of ten NBC Symphony telecasts has been issued on VHS and LaserDisc by RCA in 1990 and on DVD by Testament in 2006. While the videos derive from kinescopes, the sound tracks were carefully synchronized from the highest fidelity transcriptions and tapes that exist.
One of the NBC Symphony Orchestra's most ambitious projects was the recording of the 13-hour musical score for NBC Television's 1952–53 series Victory at Sea. Robert Russell Bennett conducted the orchestra in his arrangements of Richard Rodgers' musical themes for the 26 documentary programs (recorded in Rockefeller Center's Center Theatre). The series is currently available on DVD. The first RCA Victor LP of excerpts was recorded by Bennett and the NBC SO musicians in July 1953. Bennett would later lead stereo recordings of volume 2 in 1957, a re-make of volume 1 in 1959, and a concluding volume 3 in 1961, conducting the RCA Victor Symphony Orchestra (members of the Symphony of the Air). RCA has reissued all of these recordings on CD.
In 1954, shortly after the orchestra's final concerts with Toscanini, Stokowski made stereo recordings for RCA Victor of excerpts from
Symphony of the Air
After the NBC Symphony Orchestra disbanded, some members went on to play with other orchestras, such as
In 1957, Symphony of the Air concerts or recordings used 80% or more veteran NBC Symphony musicians. Some 70 of the 75 players having steady "binder contracts" were former NBC players; when more were needed for an engagement, it was reported "the SOA tries whenever possible to obtain ex-NBC musicians on a free-lance basis."[10]
In 1960, the
For nearly a decade, the Symphony of the Air performed many concerts led by Stokowski, the orchestra's music director from 1955. The orchestra recorded widely (on RCA Victor, Columbia, Vanguard and United Artists) under leading conductors, including Stokowski, Bernstein, Monteux, Fritz Reiner, Bruno Walter, Kirill Kondrashin, Sir Thomas Beecham, Alfred Wallenstein and Josef Krips. Only once more did they use their old name, the NBC Symphony Orchestra, in the 1963 telecast of Gian Carlo Menotti's written-for-television opera, Amahl and the Night Visitors, with an all-new cast.[12] The orchestra disbanded in 1963.
References
- ^ Russell Davenport and Maria Davenport, “Toscanini on the Air,” Fortune, January 1938, 116.
- ^ Lewis, Tom. "'A Godlike Presence': The Impact of Radio on the 1920s and 1930s", Organization of American Historians Magazine of History 6, Spring 1992.
- ^ "NBC Symphony Orchestra | Discography | Discogs". Discogs.
- ISBN 0-8065-2088-4.
- ^ Harvey Sachs, ii Toscanini[full citation needed]
- ^ Russell Davenport and Maria Davenport, “Toscanini on the Air,” Fortune, January 1938, 116.
- ISBN 978-1-57467-069-1
- ^ Meyer, Donald Carl. The NBC Symphony Orchestra. Ph.D. dissertation, University of California-Davis, 1994.
- ^ McLaughlin, Kathleen, "9th U.N. Birthday Widely Observed", October 25, 1954, The New York Times, 1"
- ^ Gelatt, Roland. "Music Makers." High Fidelity, February 1957, 51.
- ISBN 0-313-24159-7.
- IMDb
External links
- Audiophile Audition: Review of Arturo Toscanini conducts The NBC Symphony: The Television Concerts – 1948-52, Volume Four
- Joseph Stevenson. NBC Symphony Orchestra at AllMusic
- "A Toscanini Odyssey" by Mortimer H. Frank
- NBC Symphony personnel listing
- "Toscanini and NBC Symphony Orchestra (1947)": Berlioz' The Damnation of Faust (13 minutes)
- "Toscanini and NBC Symphony Orchestra (1953)": Beethoven's Eroica, 3rd movement