When the New York Philharmonic fired conductor Artur Rodzinski in 1946, Leopold Stokowski saw an opportunity -- he had long desired the post of principal conductor in New York and went to work trying to obtain it. From 1947 to 1950, Stokowski made himself available to New York on an on-call basis, conducting children's concerts, fill in concerts for other conductors, anything that New York would assign to him, remaining visible until the long process of choosing a music director was finished. Alas, it became clear by early ...
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When the New York Philharmonic fired conductor Artur Rodzinski in 1946, Leopold Stokowski saw an opportunity -- he had long desired the post of principal conductor in New York and went to work trying to obtain it. From 1947 to 1950, Stokowski made himself available to New York on an on-call basis, conducting children's concerts, fill in concerts for other conductors, anything that New York would assign to him, remaining visible until the long process of choosing a music director was finished. Alas, it became clear by early 1950 that Stokowski was not going to be New York's choice for the position, awarded instead to Dimitri Mitropoulos. To vindicate his artistry and go out with a bang, Stokowski played his "ace in the hole" through programming Gustav Mahler's Symphony No. 8 in E flat, the so-called "Symphony of a Thousand," which in 1950 had never been heard in New York. Stokowski had first conducted it in 1916 in Philadelphia and, among conductors in America in 1950, probably only he and Bruno Walter...
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