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The Rosenthal Archives recently received a collection of materials documenting the life of violinist, influential teacher, and member of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, Leon Sametini.
Sametini was born on March 16, 1886, in Rotterdam, Holland, where his father Samual was principal flute in the Royal Opera Orchestra. He showed early promise on the violin and soon became a protégé of Queen Wilhelmina of the Netherlands, who funded his study with the famed violin pedagogue Otakar Ševčík for one year.
When Sametini was fifteen, the Queen gifted to him an early eighteenth-century Serafin violin and funded his enrollment at the Prague Conservatory from 1902 until 1903. There he continued his studies with Ševčík and with then-director of the conservatory, Antonín Dvořák.
Sametini cited violinist and composer Eugène Ysaÿe as a particularly important influence on his playing, despite not formally studying with him: “It was after I had finished with all my teachers that I really began learning how to play violin: above all from Ysaÿe, whom I went to hear play wherever and whenever I could.”
A year after graduating, Sametini embarked on a decade of international travel, beginning with a six-month concert tour through Holland before moving to London and touring both England and Ireland. In 1905, he first appeared with the renowned soprano Nellie Melba, one of the first Australian classical musicians to win international recognition. Sametini also gave recitals throughout 1907 and 1908 with Australian contralto Ada Crossley and her eponymous Concert Company. Also supporting Crossley in her tour of England was composer and pianist Percy Grainger. With Crossley’s company, Sametini went on to tour Australia and New Zealand, as well as India and Indonesia, in 1908.
In 1912, Sametini departed London for Chicago, where he had accepted a position as the head of the violin department at the Chicago Musical College (now a division of the Chicago College of Performing Arts at Roosevelt University), a position he would hold for the remainder of his life. Soon after his arrival, Sametini rehearsed Brahms’s Violin Concerto with Frederick Stock, and it became clear that there were plans in the works for him to soon perform with the Theodore Thomas Orchestra (as the ensemble was then known).
However, this opportunity came about sooner than anticipated. Mischa Elman was scheduled to perform Saint-Saëns’s Third Violin Concerto with the Orchestra on January 24 and 25, 1913. However, Frederick Wessels, the Orchestral Association’s manager, received a telegram from Elman at 10:11 a.m. on January 24, stating that Elman was “ill with grip [the flu] in hospital, Madison [Wisconsin]. Doctors Head and Jackson refuse to allow me leave, therefore impossible to play today or tomorrow.”
Stock immediately contacted Sametini, who, with mere hours’ notice, replaced Elman and performed Brahms’s Violin Concerto with the Orchestra. In spite of these unfavorable circumstances, the violinist’s dramatic debut was received enthusiastically by Chicago audiences and critics. Sametini earned “much applause and great success,” wrote Maurice Rosenfeld in the Chicago Daily News, and “belongs to the list of brilliant young violin virtuosos. . . . Sametini’s playing of the difficult Brahms concerto disclosed him to be an artist of eminent qualities [with the ] technical equipment of the leading virtuosos of the day.” In the Chicago Tribune, Glenn Dillard Gunn added, “Such a feat inspires respect. It attests to the courage and decision of character as well as to abundant talent and sterling qualities of musicianship. These were the salient elements revealed in [Sametini’s] interpretation.”
Sametini performed a similar act of musical heroism just a week later, on February 2, 1913, with the Chicago Grand Opera Company. He stepped in as a last-minute replacement for Efrem Zimbalist, performing the final two movements of Mendelssohn’s Violin Concerto along with Saint-Saëns’s Introduction and Rondo capriccioso. “Mr. Sametini proved again his right to be reckoned among the foremost artists of he city with a musicianly performance . . singing qualities of tone, with accentuation of rhythm, and with musical phrasing,” wrote the critic in the Chicago Examiner.
The violinist became a frequent soloist across the city and surrounding areas, and Sametini would feature as soloist with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra on two more occasions. On December 20 and 21, 1918, he appeared with the CSO playing Saint-Saëns’s Third Violin Concerto, conducted by Eric DeLamarter. Just over a decade later, on December 28 and 29, 1928, he returned, this time performing Lalo’s Violin Concerto in F minor and Saint-Saëns’s Introduction and Rondo capriccioso under Stock’s baton. At Stock’s invitation, Sametini joined the Orchestra’s first violin section for the 1942-43 season. He died of a heart ailment in Chicago on August 20, 1944, at the age of fifty-eight.
Leon Sametini is best remembered for his contributions as a pedagogue, working with many notable violinists, and his teaching philosophy is reflected in the diverse achievements of his protégés. He encouraged his students to not only consider a career as a soloist, but also to explore the broad range of opportunities available in an orchestra. Sametini recognized the distinct skills required of both the soloist and the orchestral violinist, treating both roles with impartiality and encouraging his students to pursue whichever best played to their strengths.
Writing in The Musical Leader, Sametini expressed his philosophy. “There is every opportunity in this country to become an able musician and a great violinist, and those who do not attain the rank of soloists need not feel that they are any less musicians on that account. Their unique talents simply make them better orchestral musicians than soloists, and who is to say there is any degree of superiority between these two branches of the same art?”
Sametini’s students included many orchestral string players, including several members of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra: William Faldner (violin, 1956–1994), Victor Charbulak (violin, 1922–1967), Samuel Thaviu (violin, 1934–1937), and Sheppard Lehnhoff (viola, 1930–45 and 1953–1978). Milton Preves also studied with Sametini before being appointed to the CSO’s viola section by Frederick Stock, achieving the ranks of assistant principal and principal in 1936 and 1939 respectively, serving until his retirement in 1986. Mildred Brown studied with Sametini in 1915 before becoming a charter member of the Civic Orchestra during the 1919–20 season. Brown was invited to return to the Civic by Stock in 1922, becoming the ensemble’s first female concertmaster. Fred Spector, another of Sametini’s students, also was concertmaster of the Civic before joining the CSO’s first violin section in 1956, serving until his retirement in 2003. Sametini also taught composer and violinist Silvestre Revueltas, whose works have been performed by the Orchestra on several occasions.
The Leon Sametini Collection in the Rosenthal Archives contains the violinist and teacher’s collection of musical memorabilia from his decades of performance, including clippings of concert reviews from his years as an international soloist, as well as autographed portraits of his many friends, teachers, and collaborators within the musical world.
This article also appears here.
With her masters in musicology from Northwestern University, Sara Mercurio is an acquisitions assistant for Northwestern’s libraries and an intern in the Chicago Symphony Orchestra Association’s Rosenthal Archives. In the fall of 2023, she will begin a master’s degree in library and information science at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign.
Cover of one of four World’s Columbian Exposition pop-up books
On April 28, 1890, President Benjamin Harrison signed an act of Congress awarding Chicago the honor of hosting a world’s fair—the World’s Columbian Exposition—to celebrate the 400th anniversary of Christopher Columbus’s arrival in the New World. Architects Daniel Burnham and John Wellborn Root were charged with oversight of the design and construction, but following Root’s unexpected death in January 1891, Burnham became the sole director of works. He engaged several other architects—including Frederick Law Olmsted, Charles Follen McKim, and Louis Sullivan—to design a classical revival–themed city with grand boulevards, elaborate building façades, and lush gardens. Beaux Arts design concepts—based on symmetry, balance, and grace—were employed, and the 200 new, but intentionally temporary, buildings were mostly covered in plaster of Paris and painted a chalky white, giving the fairgrounds its nickname, the “White City.”
Chicago World’s Fair 1893 by Harley Dewitt Nichols (1859–1939)
The fairgrounds stretched over nearly 700 acres in Jackson Park and officially opened to the public on May 1, 1893—125 years ago. Over the next six months, nearly fifty countries would exhibit and close to twenty-eight million people would visit. Juicy Fruit chewing gum, Cream of Wheat, Quaker Oats, Shredded Wheat, Aunt Jemima pancake mix, and the Ferris Wheel were introduced, along with the first U.S. Post Office–issued picture postcards and commemorative stamps and U.S. Mint–issued commemorative quarter and half-dollar coins. Following its blue ribbon–win as “America’s Best” at the exposition, the Pabst Brewing Company officially changed the name of its signature beer.
One visitor was poet and author Katharine Lee Bates, who would later include “Thine alabaster cities gleam” in her poem America the Beautiful. Herman Webster Mudgett (a.k.a. Dr. Henry Howard Holmes) traveled to the fair with two of his eventual victims (later described by Erik Larson in his book The Devil in the White City). And natives bragging about the fair likely contributed to the popularity of Chicago’s nickname as the “Windy City.”
Theodore Thomas
Soon after Theodore Thomas agreed to lead the new Chicago Orchestra, the exposition’s executive committee (many of whom were the same men who were helping to finance his new orchestra) offered him the job of director of music for the fair. Inspired by Burnham’s imagination and drive—not to mention that the committee was prepared to spend nearly one million dollars on music and two performance halls—Thomas accepted shortly after his new orchestra’s inaugural concerts on October 16 and 17, 1891, in the Auditorium Theatre.
Thomas laid out an extensive plan for all types of concerts and issued a proclamation in the spring of 1892 setting forth many lofty goals, among them “the hearty support of American musicians, amateurs, and societies, for participation on great festival occasions of popular music, and for the interpretation of the most advanced composition, American and foreign.” He made his new orchestra the foundation of the resident ensemble, the Exposition Orchestra, augmented to over one hundred players, and he invited the most important musicians in the world to participate: Johannes Brahms, Antonín Dvořák, Joseph Joachim, Piotr Tchaikovsky, Jules Massenet, Camille Saint-Saëns, Giuseppe Verdi, Pietro Mascagni, Charles Gounod, Anton Rubinstein, and Hans Richter, among others.
Music Hall, designed by Charles Atwood
Two music buildings were constructed for a combined cost of $230,000. Music Hall, designed by Charles Atwood, had two performance spaces, seating 600 and 2,000. Festival Hall, designed by Francis M. Whitehouse, had a stage that was reportedly larger than the entire Metropolitan Opera House and seated 4,000 with standing room for more than 2,000.
The inaugural ceremony on October 21, 1892, was given in Festival Hall and included 5,500 singers in the chorus, an orchestra of 200, two large military bands, and two drum corps of fifty players each. In order to for everyone to see, Thomas used a large white handkerchief to conduct, rather than a baton. The event opened with the American composer John Knowles Paine’s Columbus March and Hymn, and continued with Carl Koelling’s World’s Columbian Exposition Waltz and George Whitefield Chadwick‘s Ode for the Opening of the World’s Fair held at Chicago 1892 (set to a poem by Harriet Monroe).
George Whitefield Chadwick’s Ode for the Opening of the World’s Fair held at Chicago 1892 (Theodore Thomas collection)
Carl Koelling’s World’s Columbian Exposition Waltz (piano reduction, Theodore Thomas collection)
As excitement mounted for the official opening of the fair, nearly one hundred piano manufacturers began to vie for the opportunity to exhibit. Some exposition officials began to take sides with different manufacturers, and Thomas attempted to steer clear of the growing controversy. East-coast builders, most notably Steinway, felt the planners were giving unfair advantage to Midwest piano manufacturers, and, as a result withdrew their participation. It was decided that only pianos made by exhibiting companies could be used at the fair. The press had a field day, criticizing both Thomas and the exposition planners, accusing all of conspiring for personal advantage.
Ignace Paderewski
The Exposition’s inaugural concert was scheduled for May 2, 1893, and Thomas’s first choice for soloist was the famous Polish pianist Ignace Paderewski. He had performed with the Chicago Orchestra and had even offered to waive his usual $5,000 per concert fee. He would perform his Piano Concerto in A minor for the first concert and Schumann’s concerto for the second; Theodore Thomas would conduct the Exposition Orchestra (the Chicago Orchestra expanded to 114 players).
Paderewski was unofficially an exclusive Steinway artist and if he was going to perform, it had to be on a Steinway. With Burnham’s help—and unbeknownst to Thomas—workers were able to sneak Paderewski’s Steinway concert grand into Music Hall the night before the first concert.
May 2, 1893
“Those who sat beneath the potent spell [Paderewski’s] mighty genius weaves could but acknowledge his unrivaled greatness and congratulate the exposition upon having secured him for the assisting artist at the inaugural concert,” reported the Chicago Tribune, praising the “surpassing beauty and matchless artistic greatness” of his performance.
By the time the committee discovered Paderewski’s use of a Steinway, it was too late to react. Thomas was falsely accused of conspiring against the committee, and despite the musical success of the concert, again, he was roasted in the press and public debate and criticism increased.
Theodore Thomas’s Exposition ticket book
Other problems included the cavernous acoustics in the Music Hall, Chicago’s May weather was bitter cold and the halls were not heated, and ticket sales for concerts were significantly less than anticipated. Thomas had difficulty hiding his disappointment, which only added to the mounting criticism against him.
Stubs from Thomas’s ticket book
After having conducted nearly seventy concerts in little more than three months, distraught over poor attendance, and mired in controversy, Thomas resigned as musical director in early August. His ticket book for the fair confirms his attendance; the last admission stub removed is for August 11, and at noon that day in Festival Hall, he led his Exposition Orchestra in one last concert.
August 12, 1893
Of all of the musicians Thomas invited to participate in the fair, only one actually made the journey to Chicago—Antonín Dvořák. August 12—the day after Thomas’s last concert—was designated as Bohemian Day, and according to the Chicago Tribune, “Bohemia ruled the World’s Columbian Exposition yesterday. It was the special date set apart for that nationality, and its citizens invaded the White City at every entrance by the thousands.”
Nearly 8,000 people packed into the fair’s Festival Hall to hear the Exposition Orchestra under the batons of Vojtěch I. Hlaváč, professor of music at the Imperial University in Saint Petersburg, Russia, and Dvořák, then the director of New York’s National Conservatory of Music in America.
August 12, 1893
The Tribune reviewer continued. “As Dvořák walked out upon the stage a storm of applause greeted him. For nearly two minutes the old composer [age fifty-one!] stood beside the music rack, baton in hand, bowing his acknowledgements. The players dropped their instruments to join in the welcome. Symphony no. 4 in G major [now known as no. 8], considered a severe test of technical writing as well as playing, was interpreted brilliantly. The Orchestra caught the spirit and magnetism of the distinguished leader. The audience sat as if spell-bound. Tremendous outbursts of applause were given.” On the second half of the program, Dvořák conducted selections from his Slavonic Dances and closed the program with his overture My Country.
For the next several weeks, the concerts given were primarily organ recitals. Concertmaster Max Bendix would lead the Exposition Orchestra in most of the remaining scheduled symphonic concerts, and the repertoire was modified to feature lighter, more popular works.
Thomas never completely recovered from the disappointment of the fair, and in his 1904 autobiography, he made no mention of the exposition whatsoever. In Memoirs of Theodore Thomas, completed in 1911 by his widow Rose Fay, she described one silver lining: during the fair, the “the daily concerts and rehearsals of the Orchestra had brought it up to the very highest point of artistic proficiency, and given it an enormous repertoire of music, so that Thomas felt he now had an almost perfect instrument for the concerts of the coming winter . . . This was a great relief to his mind.”
The Chicago Orchestra’s third season began the day after Thanksgiving on November 24 and 25, 1893, at the Auditorium Theatre.
Portions of this article previously appeared here and here, and an abbreviated version will appear in the CSO’s May 2018 program book.
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August 12, 1893
“Bohemia ruled the World’s Columbian Exposition yesterday. It was the special date set apart for that nationality, and its citizens invaded the White City at every entrance by the thousands,” wrote the reviewer in the Chicago Daily Tribune.
On August 12, 1893, 8,000 people packed into the fair’s Festival Hall to hear the Exposition Orchestra—the Chicago Orchestra expanded to 114 players—under the batons of Vojtěch I. Hlaváč, professor of music at the Imperial University in Saint Petersburg, Russia, and the director of New York’s National Conservatory of Music in America, Antonín Dvořák.
The Tribune reviewer continued: “As Dvořák walked out upon the stage a storm of applause greeted him. For nearly two minutes the old composer [age fifty-one!] stood beside the music rack, baton in hand, bowing his acknowledgements. The players dropped their instruments to join in the welcome. Symphony no. 4 in G major [now known as no. 8], considered a severe test of technical writing as well as playing, was interpreted brilliantly. The Orchestra caught the spirit and magnetism of the distinguished leader. The audience sat as if spell-bound. Tremendous outbursts of applause were given.” On the second half of the program, Dvořák conducted selections from his Slavonic Dances and closed the program with his overture My Country.
This article also appears here.
August 12, 1893
Austrian pianist Till Fellner is in Chicago this week to perform Mozart’s Piano Concerto no. 22 with the Orchestra under the baton of Bernard Haitink. And in between rehearsals, he visited the Rosenthal Archives to do a little research on his great-grandfather’s brother’s son—that would be his first cousin twice removed—Hugo Kortschak, who was a former violinist and assistant concertmaster of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra!
Here’s a summary of what Fellner discovered:
Kortschak’s advance program biography for his March 1912 performances
After studying violin with Otakar Ševčík and composition with Antonín Dvořák at the Prague Conservatory, Hugo Kortschak (1884–1957) briefly was a member of the Berlin Philharmonic. He soon moved to Frankfurt to accept a position with the Museums Quartet and to be an instructor with Hugo Heermann‘s violin school. In 1906 (possibly 1907), he followed Heermann to Chicago, when the latter accepted a post at the Chicago Musical College; and upon his arrival, Kortschak accepted an invitation from second music director Frederick Stock to join the Chicago Symphony Orchestra for the 1907–08 season. He briefly returned to Europe to pursue further study before coming back to Chicago as assistant concertmaster in 1910 through 1912 and (following a European concert tour in 1912–13) again for the 1913–14 season. While in Chicago, he founded the Kortschak Quartet in 1913 which, with the encouragement of Elizabeth Sprague Coolidge, became the Berkshire String Quartet. After his tenure in Chicago, Kortschak later was head of the violin department at Yale University and in his retirement was a member of the Honolulu Symphony Orchestra.
Kortschak also was soloist with the Orchestra on several occasions—all with Stock conducting—as follows:
March 17 and 18, 1911
AULIN Violin Concerto No. 3 in C Minor, Op. 14
March 22 and 23, 1912
MOZART Violin Concerto No. 4 in D Major, K. 218
December 5 and 6, 1913
NOREN Violin Concerto in A Minor, Op. 38 (U.S. premiere)
October 30 and 31, 1914
GOLDMARK Violin Concerto in A Minor, Op. 28
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October 30 and 31, 1891
On October 30, 1891—only two weeks after its inaugural concert—the Chicago Orchestra gave the U.S. premiere of Dvořák’s Violin Concerto at the Auditorium Theatre. Max Bendix, the Orchestra’s first concertmaster from 1891 until 1896, was soloist, and Theodore Thomas conducted.
The program book for the third week of subscription concerts listed the concerto as “new” and “the program annotator [Adolph W. Dohn], like anyone writing about contemporary music, hedged his bets on Dvořák’s future reputation,” according to the Orchestra’s current program annotator Phillip Huscher. “Of the Bohemian composer’s recent decision to relocate to the United States, a new world he would later famously depict in a symphony, [Dohn] said only, ‘it remains to be seen to what extent the influences of another civilization may affect his musical expression.’ ”
“The solo part is, as has been said, one of great difficulty, that of the last movement being especially trying. Mr. Max Bendix met these difficulties and overcame them in most instances with ease,” wrote the reviewer in the Chicago Tribune. “His phrasing is truly exceptional in its artistic beauty and purity. Rarely has a violinist been heard in Chicago who has equaled Mr. Bendix in this respect.”
Detail from the program note for October 30 and 31, 1891
This article also appears here.
One of my favorite Chicago institutions—the Newberry Library—is celebrating their 125th anniversary this year. To commemorate the event, they have mounted a spectacular exhibit called The Newberry 125, which highlights 125 artifacts from their collections divided into five sections: families, politics and commerce, religions, travel, and arts and letters. The exhibit is paired with a second installation, Realizing the Newberry Idea, 1887–2012.
The arts and letters section includes a Chicago Symphony Orchestra–related artifact: a letter and calling card from Antonín Dvořák to Theodore Thomas, our founder and first music director.
The Chicago Orchestra and the Apollo Club present Dvořák’s Requiem in April 1893
A beautiful book accompanies the exhibit (The Newberry 125: Stories of Our Collection), and the article for the Dvořák artifacts explains that Thomas had conducted Dvořák’s Requiem at the Cincinnati May Festival on May 28, 1892, and again the following year in Chicago on April 10 and 11, 1893 (program page pictured at right). The article continues: “News traveled fast to Dvořák, who wrote on April 14, ‘You have taken much pains and trouble in preparing and performing my work, and therefore I feel it my duty to extend to you my heartfelt thanks.'”
The article also mentions that the Newberry’s collections include “letters to Thomas and some personal materials [along with] scrapbooks of all of the programs Thomas conducted from 1864 through 1903. His personal classical-music library—once considered to be the largest of its type in the world—comprised first editions, rare full scores, and monographs, most of which Thomas’s widow and children gave to the Newberry in 1908.” Of course, a significant portion of Thomas’s collection is also here in the Rosenthal Archives.
The exhibit will be open through December 31, 2012, there are a number of special events, and you can also follow the exhibit’s blog. Don’t miss it!
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Agnes Thomson replaces an indisposed Martha Burckard-Werbke
A brief footnote: the program book on file for the April 1893 concerts contained this program insert. However, it is not clear whether Mrs. Thomson replaced Mrs. Burckard-Werbke for both performances or just one.
from the archives 