NET Festival; Leopold Stokowski

National Educational Television and Radio Center · April 28, 1970

For more than a half century the name of Leopold Stokowski has meant glamor and magic in the art of symphonic music. This program is a summary of the career of the maestro; it focuses on his activities today as conductor of the American Symphony Orchestra and reviews his life from the early days as the youngest student ever accepted by the Royal College of Music through his years as conductor of the Cincinnati and the Philadelphia orchestras. Today the Stokowski schedule is as hectic as ever. The program presents some of the varied activities of his current schedule. He auditions a young violinist, Marilyn du Bow, for the American symphony Orchestra, which he founded in 1962; he receives the Gold Medal for Distinguished Service to the Arts from the American Academy of Arts and Letters; he journeys to London for rehearsal and recording sessions with the London Symphony orchestra. At 88 he still travels to Europe every year; since he refuses to fly, he has spent the equivalent of two years of his life at sea. That life began on April 18, 1882, when Stokowski was born in London at Number 13 Upper Marylebone Street, now New Cavendish Street. Even among precocious children the young Stokowski was exceptional. At 14 he was accepted as the youngest student ever admitted to the Royal College of Music. His first love was the organ and his first important job came in 1902 when he was appointed organist and choirmaster at St. James church, Piccadilly. In 1905 Stokowski accepted an offer to go to America to become organist and choirmaster at St. Bartholomew's Church in New York City. In 1909 he assumed the role that the world was to know him in best, that of orchestral conductor. The orchestra was the Cincinnati Symphony and at that time he still conducted with the traditional baton. His worldwide celebrity began with is assumption of the post of conductor or the Philadelphia Orchestra in 1912. During the next 26 years this organization became one of the world's greatest symphonies. Equally famous during this period were some of his ideas about orchestras - many formed during his period as an organist and reflected in his transcriptions for full orchestra of organ composition, particularly those of Johann Sebastian Bach. By now the world the world at large knew Stokowski as an international personality famed for the flittering circles in which he moved and for his technique of conducting only with is hands, often spotlighted in a darkened auditorium. An American citizen since 1915, Stokowski likes doing things the American way. The program includes an annual spring baseball game between his American Symphony Orchestra and the New York Philharmonic, an event in which his orchestra is usually victorious. One of the baseball players is Stokowski's son Christopher, whose mother is Gloria Vanderbilt, the third of Stokowski's ex-wives. A high point of the program is a visit from Canadian pianist Glenn Gould, who had given up his concert career to make records and to produce radio and television programs. He interviews Stokowski for a Canadian Broadcasting Corporation radio feature. In rehearsal and recording sessions we see Stokowski preparing the London Symphony Orchestra in Beethoven's Fifth Symphony for Decca Records in London; and at the Felt Forum in New York's Madison square Garden working with his American Symphony Orchestra on Sousa's "The Stars and Stripes Forever," and Schubert's Symphony No.8, "The Unfinished." Fanfare #44 - "Leopold Stokowski" - is an NET production. (Description adapted from documents in the NET Microfiche) 1 hour piece, produced by NET and initially distributed by NET in 1970. It first aired as NET Festival episode 117 on April 28, 1970, and was rebroadcast Fanfare episode 44 on August 8, 1971. It was originally shot in color. Fanfare is an anthology series of performing arts programming.