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The Chicago Symphony Orchestra family remembers one of its iconic musicians, Milton Preves (1909–2000), in honor of the anniversary of his birth on June 18.
Born in Cleveland, Preves moved to Chicago as a teenager and attended Senn High School. He was a student of Leon Sametini at Chicago Musical College, Richard Czerwonky at the Bush Conservatory of Music, and Albert Noelte and Ramon Girvin at the Institute of Music and Allied Arts before attending the University of Chicago.
Preves joined the Little Symphony of Chicago in 1930, regularly worked in radio orchestras, and was invited by Mischa Mischakoff (then CSO concertmaster) to join the Mischakoff String Quartet in 1932. Two years later, second music director Frederick Stock appointed Preves to the Chicago Symphony Orchestra’s viola section, promoting him to assistant principal in 1936 and principal in 1939. He would remain in that post for the next forty-seven years, serving under a total of seven music directors, including Désiré Defauw, Artur Rodzinski, Rafael Kubelík, Fritz Reiner, Jean Martinon, and Sir Georg Solti.
Preves performed as a soloist with the Orchestra on dozens of occasions, including the world premieres of David Van Vactor’s Viola Concerto and Ernest Bloch’s Suite hébraïque for Viola and Orchestra, both dedicated to him. Under Reiner, he recorded Richard Strauss’s Don Quixote—along with cellist Antonio Janigro and concertmaster John Weicher—with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra for RCA in 1959.
A lifelong educator, Preves served on the faculties of Roosevelt, Northwestern, and DePaul universities, and he also always taught privately out of his home. An avid conductor, he held titled posts with the North Side Symphony Orchestra of Chicago, Oak Park–River Forest Symphony, Wheaton Summer Symphony, Gary Symphony, and the Gold Coast Chamber Orchestra. As a chamber musician, he performed with the Budapest, Fine Arts, Gordon, and Chicago Symphony string quartets, as well as the Chicago Symphony Chamber Players.
As reported in his obituary in the Chicago Tribune, “It was while directing the Oak Park–River Forest group that he gained an unusual measure of national attention. He briefly became an icon of the fledgling civil rights movement in 1963, when he resigned from the community orchestra because it would not allow a Black violinist he had invited to perform with the group.” (More information can be found here.)
Preves died at the age of ninety on June 11, 2000, following a long illness. Shortly thereafter, his family began donating materials to the Rosenthal Archives, establishing his collection of correspondence, contracts, photographs, scrapbooks, programs, and recordings. Most recently, his children donated additional photographs, mostly portraits of music directors and guest conductors, all autographed and dedicated to Preves. A sample of that collection is below.
In October 1984, on the occasion of Milton Preves’s fiftieth anniversary with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, fellow viola Isadore Zverow (1909–1999) composed this poem to honor his colleague:
It’s no mean feat, without retreat
To hold the forte so long,
To stroke and pluck in cold and heat—
All to produce a song.
Toward music bent, with single intent,
Unyielding dedication,
You of yourself so gladly lent
Your valued perspiration.
You sat and played and marked and bowed
And sometimes e’en reproached
And sometimes we squirmed (just a bit)
We didn’t wanna be coached.
And yet whene’er the chips were down
Throughout these fifty anna,
Your steadfast presence was a crown
Aiming at Nirvana.
This article also appears here.
Step into Your Place, David Allen & Sons, England, 1915
The recruitment poster at left, from the Pritzker Military Museum & Library collections, shows men in civilian attire falling into formation, joining ranks of soldiers marching into the distance.
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Walter Guetter and Wendell Hoss
Bassoon Walter Guetter (1895–1937) was hired by Frederick Stock in 1915, after auditioning at Willow Grove Park, where the Chicago Symphony Orchestra regularly performed summer concerts. He was promoted to principal bassoon during his second season and temporarily left the Orchestra in 1918 to serve in the U.S. Navy at the Great Lakes Naval Training Station. After the war, Guetter returned to the principal chair through 1922 until he was invited by Leopold Stokowski to join the Philadelphia Orchestra, also as principal bassoon.
Wendell Hoss (1892–1980) joined the Chicago Symphony Orchestra’s horn section in June 1917 for the Ravinia Park and subsequent downtown seasons, and he joined the U.S. Navy the following summer, serving at the Great Lakes Naval Training Station. After his year in the Navy, Hoss played in the Los Angeles Symphony Orchestra and the Cleveland Orchestra before returning to Chicago for one season as principal horn in 1922–23. He later taught at the Eastman School of Music, performed in the Disney recording studios, and was a co-founder of the International Horn Society.
Otto, Edward, and Henri Hyna
Czechoslovakia native Otto Hyna (1886–1951) emigrated to the U.S. in 1904 and later served in the National Guard as a member of the First Wisconsin Regiment of Field Artillery in 1917. Following his military service, he was principal bass of the Minneapolis Symphony Orchestra from 1921 until 1923. Hyna joined the Chicago Symphony Orchestra’s bass section in 1930, where he remained until 1950. Otto’s brothers Edward and Henri also were members of the Orchestra’s string section. Edward (1897–1958) served as a violinist from 1929 until 1943, and Henri (1901–1955) also was a violinist from 1928 until 1932.
For the final concert of the 1917–18 season, Frederick Stock opened the concert with America and closed with his Festival March and The Star-Spangled Banner. A new stage decoration recognized musicians serving the U.S. military. The article is here.
Fort Sheridan Water Tower in 1898 (Detroit Photographic Company image)
Frederick Stock led the Orchestra in a concert at Fort Sheridan on October 21, 1917. According to the Chicago Tribune, Company 21 celebrated after the concert with a dinner that included: “Turkey à la Cook (in honor of company commander Captain Louis H. Cook), oyster dressing à la Smith (in honor of company instructor Captain Horace Smith), first platoon gravy, Murphys [potatoes] à la pick and shovel, shrapnel peas, dugout olives, bayonet celery, grenade cranberry sauce, trench coffee, [and] periscope pie . . .” The article is here.
During the 1919–20 season, Frederick Stock inaugurated three major initiatives to cultivate future generations of musicians and concertgoers: a regular series of Children’s Concerts, Youth Auditions, and the Civic Music Student Orchestra.
Chicago Tribune, January 30, 1920
One of the goals of the Civic Orchestra was “to reduce the dependence of this country upon European sources of supply for trained orchestral musicians” as well as to function as a reserve of talent from which to draw into the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. The article is here.
First Civic Orchestra Program, March 29, 1920
Five hundred young musicians auditioned in January 1920, eighty-six were accepted, and the first rehearsal was held in Orchestra Hall on January 27.
Stock and the Civic Orchestra in March 1920
The ensemble made its debut on March 29, 1920, and the roster included future Chicago Symphony Orchestra members (including John Weicher, who became concertmaster in 1937). Frederick Stock, Eric DeLamarter, and George Dasch (also a member of the Orchestra’s violin and viola sections from 1898 until 1923) shared conducting duties, leading works by Halvorsen’s Triumphal Entry of the Boyards, Godard’s Adagio pathétique, Tchaikovsky’s Fifth Symphony, Grieg’s Suite no. 1 from Peer Gynt, Keller’s Souvenir and Valse, and one of Elgar’s Pomp and Circumstance marches.
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A Time for Reflection—A Message of Peace—a companion exhibit curated by the Rosenthal Archives of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra in collaboration with the Pritzker Military Museum & Library—will be on display in Symphony Center’s first-floor rotunda from October 2 through November 18, and the content also will be presented on CSO Sounds & Stories and the From the Archives blog.
This article also appears here. For event listings, please visit cso.org/armistice.
This exhibit is presented with the generous support of COL (IL) Jennifer N. Pritzker, IL ARNG (Retired), Founder and Chair, Pritzker Military Museum & Library, through the Pritzker Military Foundation.
Additional thanks to Shawn Sheehy and Jenna Harmon, along with the Arts Club of Chicago, Newberry Library, Poetry Foundation, and Ravinia Festival Association.
On August 25, 2018, the Chicago Symphony Orchestra joins the music world in celebrating the centennial of composer, conductor, pianist, author, and lecturer Leonard Bernstein, who was, according to John von Rhein, “one of the most phenomenally gifted and successful Renaissance men of music in American history.”
Shortly after his remarkable debut—replacing an ailing Bruno Walter—with the New York Philharmonic on November 14, 1943, Bernstein first appeared with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra on July 4, 1944. The “much discussed young conductor . . . drew 4,100 people to Ravinia last night,” wrote Claudia Cassidy in the Chicago Tribune. “It was Mr. Bernstein’s concert. . . . The eye and the ear inevitably gravitated to the slight young figure on the podium, a dark young man with a sensitive, sensuous face a little like David Lichine’s, hands that gyrate so convulsively they scarcely could hold a baton if they tried, and eyes that somehow manage to be agonized, supplicant, and truculent without losing their place in the score. A fascinating fellow, this Bernstein, dynamic, emotional, yet under complete control.”
Bernstein appeared with the Orchestra on several occasions in Orchestra Hall, at the Ravinia Festival, and in Milwaukee and New York City, as follows:
July 4, 1944, Ravinia Festival
BEETHOVEN Overture to Egmont, Op. 84
BEETHOVEN Violin Concerto in D Major, Op. 61
Joseph Szigeti, violin
SIBELIUS Symphony No. 1 in E Minor, Op. 39
July 6, 1944, Ravinia Festival
TCHAIKOVSKY Romeo and Juliet
RAVEL Piano Concerto in G Major
Leonard Bernstein, piano
Herman Felber, Jr., conductor
TCHAIKOVSKY Symphony No. 4 in F Minor, Op. 36
July 8, 1944, Ravinia Festival
BARTÓK Rhapsody No. 1 for Violin and Orchestra
Joseph Szigeti, violin
MOZART Serenade in G Major, K. 525 (Eine kleine Nachtmusik)
MOZART Violin Concerto No. 4 in D Major, K. 218
Joseph Szigeti, violin
STRAUSS Don Juan, Op. 20
STRAVINSKY Suite from The Firebird
July 9, 1944, Ravinia Festival
BERNSTEIN Symphony No. 1 (Jeremiah)
Jennie Tourel, mezzo-soprano
COPLAND Suite from Our Town
ROSSINI “Non più mesta” from La Cenerentola
Jennie Tourel, mezzo-soprano
ROSSINI Overture to La gazza ladra
SIBELIUS Symphony No. 1 in E Minor, Op. 39
July 31, 1945, Ravinia Festival
BRAHMS Academic Festival Overture in C Minor, Op. 80
BRAHMS Piano Concerto No. 1 in D Minor, Op. 15
Leon Fleisher, piano
SHOSTAKOVICH Symphony No. 5 in D Minor, Op. 47
August 2, 1945, Ravinia Festival
CASADESUS/Steinberg Concerto in D Major
BEETHOVEN Symphony No. 3 in E-flat Major, Op. 55 (Eroica)
August 4, 1945, Ravinia Festival
COPLAND El salón México
FRANCK Symphonic Variations for Piano and Orchestra
Leon Fleisher, piano
LISZT Piano Concerto No. 2 in A Major
Leon Fleisher, piano
MOZART Symphony No. 38 in D Major, K. 504 (Prague)
August 5, 1945, Ravinia Festival
BERNSTEIN Suite from Fancy Free
HAYDN Symphony No. 85 in B-flat Major (La reine)
SHOSTAKOVICH Symphony No. 5 in D Minor, Op. 47
January 1951
January 18, 19, and 23, 1951, Orchestra Hall
January 22, 1951, Pabst Theater, Milwaukee
HAYDN Symphony No. 102 in B-flat Major
RAVEL Piano Concerto in G Major
Leonard Bernstein, piano and conductor
STRAVINSKY The Rite of Spring
January 25 and 26, 1951, Orchestra Hall
BACH Brandenburg Concerto No. 5 in D Major, BWV 1050
René Rateau, flute
John Weicher, violin
Leonard Bernstein, piano and conductor
MAHLER Symphony No 2 in C Minor (Resurrection)
Alyne Dumas Lee, soprano
Ruth Slater, mezzo-soprano
Chicago Musical College Chorus
Christian Choral Club
James Baar, director
July 26, 1956, Ravinia Festival
CASADESUS/Steinberg Andante lento molto from Concerto in D Major
BERNSTEIN Serenade
Vladimir Spivakovsky, violin
TCHAIKOVSKY Symphony No. 6 in B Minor, Op. 74 (Pathétique)
July 27, 1956, Ravinia Festival
BERNSTEIN Symphony No. 2 (The Age of Anxiety)
Byron Janis, piano
MOZART Symphony No. 29 in A Major, K. 201
SCHUMANN Symphony No. 2 in C Major, Op. 61
July 28, 1956, Ravinia Festival
BACH Brandenburg Concerto No. 5 in D Major, BWV 1050
Ernst Liegl, flute
John Weicher, violin
Leonard Bernstein, piano and conductor
BERNSTEIN Symphony No. 1 (Jeremiah)
Jennie Tourel, mezzo-soprano
MOZART “Zeffiretti lusinghiere” from Idomeneo, K. 366
Jennie Tourel, mezzo-soprano
MOZART “Ch’io mi scordi di te?”, K. 505
Jennie Tourel, mezzo-soprano
Leonard Bernstein, piano and conductor
STRAVINSKY Suite from The Firebird
Leonard Bernstein in rehearsal with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra in June 1988 (Jim Steere photo)
June 16 and 17, 1988, Orchestra Hall
STRAUSS Death and Transfiguration, Op. 24
John Fiore, conductor
STRAUSS Don Juan, Op. 20
Kate Tamarkin, conductor
STRAUSS Till Eulenspiegel’s Merry Pranks, Op. 28
Leif Bjaland, conductor
SHOSTAKOVICH Symphony No. 1, Op. 10
Bjaland, Fiore, and Tamarkin appeared in conjunction with the 1988 American Conductors Program for which Bernstein was the artistic advisor. A joint project of the American Symphony Orchestra League and the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, the program was made possible through the generous support of the Ford Motor Company Fund.
June 21 and 22, 1988, Orchestra Hall
June 24, 1988, Avery Fisher Hall, New York
SHOSTAKOVICH Symphony No. 7, Op. 60 (Leningrad)
“I cannot recall a season finale of recent years, in fact, that sent the audience home on such a tidal wave of euphoria, and for so many of the right reasons,” wrote John von Rhein in the Chicago Tribune, following the first performance of the Leningrad Symphony on June 21. “Indeed, the conductor was constantly pushing the music beyond the rhetorical brink, then drawing back when things threatened to go over the top. Of course, he had the world’s greatest Shostakovich brass section at his ready command. The augmented brasses blared with magnificent menace, the violins sounded their unison recitatives with vehement intensity. And the woodwinds, with their always crisp and characterful playing, reminded us of the many poetic, soft sections that separate the bombastic outbursts.”
Both of Shostakovich’s symphonies were recorded live by Deutsche Grammophon and the subsequent release received the 1990 Grammy Award for Best Orchestral Performance.
Portions of this article previously appeared here.
The Chicago Symphony Orchestra family notes with sorrow the passing of Fred Spector, a member of the violin section from 1956 until 2003. He died earlier today, June 3, 2017, at his home in Chicago’s Lincoln Park. He was 92.
Fred Spector (J.B. Spector photo)
Solomon E. (Fred) Spector was born on March 11, 1925, on Chicago’s West Side and began violin lessons at the age of five with his uncle J.B. Mazur, concertmaster of the Czar’s Imperial Orchestra in Saint Petersburg. He attended Hyde Park High School and Chicago Musical College, and his teachers included CSO concertmaster John Weicher, Leon Sametini, and Paul Stassevitch for violin, and Henry Sopkin (who founded the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra in 1945) for conducting.
Spector flew as a U.S. Army bombardier and navigator in Japan during World War II and became the first American violinist to concertize there after the war ended. He returned to Chicago and became concertmaster of the Civic Orchestra, studied conducting with Rudolph Ganz, and later was a member of the Lyric Opera of Chicago Orchestra.
Speaking to the Chicago Tribune in 1994, Spector said that he “was actually hired into the CSO twice. The first time was in 1948 when a music director by the name of Artur Rodzinski heard me play some solos and gave me a job. The audition process was different back then, too. But Rodzinski was fired right after that, and the CSO didn’t honor any of his contracts—including mine. So I was hired and fired within a few weeks. Eight years later, the CSO asked me to audition again. I was conducting Broadway shows then—at that time it was Top Banana with Phil Silvers.”
Fred Spector in the early 1970s (Terry’s photo)
Music director Fritz Reiner hired Spector in 1956 and he served the Chicago Symphony Orchestra until his retirement in 2003. A chamber music enthusiast, he also performed with numerous ensembles in the Chicago area and was a member of the Chicago Strings, the Chicago Symphony Quartet, and the Chicago Arts Quartet for many years. Spector also was assistant conductor of the Highland Park Music Theatre.
Among numerous collectibles reflecting his varied interests, Spector was the proud owner of an extensive library of books on violin and bow history. His collection of mutes for string instruments (one of the world’s largest) included some that he found during the Orchestra’s national and international tours. Spector was the proud owner of a Carlo Bergonzi violin that dated from 1733.
Also in 1994 for the Tribune, Spector added: “playing with the CSO—which is one of the best orchestras in the world—is really something. It’s extraordinary. Even after all these years, we play concerts that still excite me. Concerts that leave me saying, ‘That was special. Everything was marvelous.’ ”
Spector is survived by Estelle, his beloved wife of sixty-six years; their children Lea, Mia (Terry), J.B. (Martha), Julie, and Ari (Jeanne); grandchildren Matt (Eve) Temkin, Dan (Kari) Temkin, Erinn Cohen, Ross Cohen, Caitlynn Spector, Adam Spector; and great-grandson Charlie Temkin. He also is survived by his brother David (Carol).
Services will be Tuesday, June 6, 2017, at 11:30 a.m. at Goldman Funeral Group, Skokie Chapel (8851 Skokie Boulevard, Skokie). Interment to follow at Memorial Park Cemetery (9900 Gross Point Road, Skokie).
In lieu of flowers, the family asks to please consider a donation to The Village Chicago or 98.7WFMT.
Chicago Daily News, November 19, 1931
Chicago audiences were first introduced to music from Bedřich Smetana’s Má vlast by the Chicago Orchestra’s founder and first music director Theodore Thomas: Vltava in January 1894, Šárka in October 1895, and Vyšehrad in April 1896. Thomas and his successor Frederick Stock regularly included these three symphonic poems on their concerts, but it wasn’t until the Orchestra’s forty-first season that Stock programmed the complete cycle, for a special concert on November 18, 1931, honoring Chicago’s rich Czech heritage.
On November 15, Edward Moore, writing for the Chicago Tribune, happily reported that he was able to hear the work a few days before the performance. The headline read, “Records give preview of new musical event: Critic hears Smetana’s music, Má vlast, on phonographic disks.” Moore wrote that courtesy of Dr. J.E.S. Vojan, president of the Bohemian Arts Club of Chicago (which would sponsor the concert), “through the medium of disk and needle, I have been enabled to hear it in advance of the concert audience.”
Title page of the score to Šárka used by Thomas and Stock
Title page of the score to Vyšehrad used by Thomas and Stock
(The recording most likely was the one made by the Czech Philharmonic in 1929, under the baton of its chief conductor Václav Talich, who later taught Karel Ančerl and Charles Mackerras. This not only was the ensemble’s first commercial recording but also the first complete recording of Smetana’s cycle of tone poems. It was released on ten, twelve-inch 78 rpm discs—just under eighty minutes of music—by His Master’s Voice.)
“Through a course of years, Mr. Stock [along with Thomas before him] and the Chicago Symphony Orchestra have made Vltava or the Moldau popular with Chicago audiences,” Moore continued. “They have played Vyšehrad a number of times, and Šárka less frequently. The other three are to come as a first performance next Wednesday.”
Following the November 18 concert, Eugene Stinson in the Daily News wrote, “Through these six works there sweeps the refreshing fragrance of a national spirit. Smetana was not merely the father of a national Bohemian music and the teacher of Dvořák. He was one of the first composers in any land to see the possibilities of such a music, founded on characteristic themes and breathing out the soul of a race.”
Title page of the score to Blaník used by Stock
Title page of the score to Tábor used by Stock
“History, legend, national songs, tonal description of nature, and a poetic imagination to transfigure them all, are in it,” added Moore in his review for the Tribune. “When one considers that Smetana wrote it under the most tragic infliction that may visit a musician, total deafness, it becomes not only one of the masterpieces of the world but the act of one of the world’s great heroes.”
“There is nothing to write but gratitude to the Chicago Bohemians and to Mr. Stock, whose combined efforts acquainted us with this lovely work,” concluded Herman Devries in the American. “What a lesson to the modern school of would-be musical alchemists with their abracadabra of gibberish and geometry, of dissonance and self-conscious abstruseness. Here is pure inspiration. Here is music that wells, untrammeled, from a source of inexhaustible creative talent. Here is melody, melody so simple, so tender, so touching; melody so poetic, so passionate, so spontaneous that one listens happily, without the need of indulgence, excuse, or partiality. But beneath all this simplicity, one hears and senses the mastermind of the great orchestral technician.”
Otto, Edward, and Henri Hyna
Devries also noted that several musicians in the Orchestra that evening were of Bohemian descent, including John Weicher (a member of the violin section from 1923 until 1969; he became concertmaster in 1937), Vaclav Jiskra (principal bass, 1908–1949), Rudolph Fiala (viola, 1922–1952), Joseph Houdek (bass, 1914–1944), and the Hyna brothers: Otto, Edward, and Henri, pictured at right. Natives of Bohemia, the Hyna brothers all served as members of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra’s string section. Otto (1886–1951) was in the bass section from 1930 until 1950, Edward (1897–1958) served as a violinist from 1929 until 1943, and Henri (1901–1955) also was a violinist from 1928 until 1932.
The Orchestra next performed the complete cycle twenty years later on October 23 and 24, 1952, under the baton of fifth music director—and Czech native—Rafael Kubelík. On December 4 and 5 of that year, the work was recorded in Orchestra Hall by Mercury Records. Returning as a guest conductor, Kubelík led performances of the six symphonic poems on January 23 and 24, 1969, and again on October 27, 28, and 29, 1983.
At the Ravinia Festival, James Levine most recently led the work on June 27, 1987. Jakub Hrůša’s upcoming performances will mark the Chicago Symphony Orchestra’s sixth traversal of Smetana’s cycle of symphonic poems.
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Boston Symphony Orchestra program from April 24 and 25, 1896
A footnote: Theodore Thomas and the Chicago Orchestra almost were able to claim the U.S. premiere performance of Vyšehrad, the first symphonic poem of Smetana’s Má vlast. However, Emil Paur and the Boston Symphony Orchestra literally were minutes ahead. Both orchestras had 2:30 p.m. matinees on Friday, April 24, 1896, but Boston’s concert was one hour earlier (railway time zones had been standardized in 1883). Also, Vyšehrad was the first work on Paur’s program, while Thomas had programmed the work to follow Tchaikovsky’s Marche slave and Berlioz’s Roman Carnival Overture and selections from The Damnation of Faust.
Boston also claimed the U.S. premiere of Šárka, performing it on January 25, 1895. Thomas led the first Chicago performance exactly nine months later on October 25.
Portions of this article accompany the program notes for the May 18, 19, and 20, 2017, performances. Special thanks to Bridget Carr, archivist for the Boston Symphony Orchestra. Program page image courtesy of HENRY, the Boston Symphony Orchestra Archives’s online performance history search engine.
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November 20, 1919
During the 1919–20 season, music director Frederick Stock inaugurated three major initiatives to cultivate future generations of musicians and concertgoers: a regular series of Children’s Concerts, Youth Auditions, and the Civic Music Student Orchestra.
On November 20, 1919, Stock led the first of a regular series of Children’s Concerts specifically designed to introduce young Chicagoans to music. After hearing several auditions from promising young instrumentalists, Stock chose eight-year-old Anita Malkin to become the first youth soloist on a Children’s Concert; she performed the first movement of Rode’s Violin Concerto with the Orchestra on February 12, 1920.
Anita Malkin
The initial goal of the Civic Music Student Orchestra was threefold: “To give an opportunity to capable players to acquire orchestral routine and experience, fitting themselves for positions in the symphony orchestras of the country; to reduce the dependence of this country upon European sources of supply for trained orchestral musicians; and to take orchestral concerts to outlying districts where people, because of their remoteness, are denied the privilege of hearing good music.”
March 29, 1920
The ensemble made its debut on March 29, 1920, and the roster included several future Chicago Symphony Orchestra members (including concertmaster John Weicher). Frederick Stock, Eric DeLamarter, and George Dasch shared conducting duties, leading Halvorsen’s Triumphal Entry of the Boyards, Godard’s Adagio pathétique, Tchaikovsky’s Fifth Symphony, Grieg’s Suite no. 1 from Peer Gynt, Keller’s Souvenir and Valse, and one of Elgar’s Pomp and Circumstance marches.
Chicago Tribune, January 30, 1920
In the Chicago Tribune, William Lines Hubbard reported, “And O, the youthful enthusiasm and ‘pop’ of it all! The whole room tingled with the vigor and impulse of youth and the audience feeling it grew glad and radiant. At the close of the first half of the program, Mr. Wessling, the concertmaster, presented a baton to Mr. Stock with expression of the players’ thanks for all he had done, and he in return voiced his admiration for the devotion the young people had shown and his appreciation of the wonderful worth of the material Chicago had furnished. . . . Stock used his new baton for the Elgar march, which closed the concert.”
This article also appears here.
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Eric DeLamarter and the Orchestra onstage at the Swift Bridge of Service bandshell, July 1, 1934 (Chicago Tribune archive photo)
A Century of Progress International Exposition—the World’s Fair celebrating the centennial of the city of Chicago—opened on May 27, 1933, and due to its immense popularity, was extended through October 31, 1934, attracting nearly fifty million visitors.
Beginning on July 1, 1934, the Chicago Symphony Orchestra presented 125 concerts at the Swift Bridge of Service, which linked the mainland with Northerly Island at 23rd Street. For ten weeks, the Orchestra regularly presented as many as fourteen concerts each week—a matinee at 3:30 p.m. and an evening concert at 8:00 p.m. every day of the week—only occasionally canceling due to extreme heat or rain and rarely repeating repertoire.
Image by Weimer Pursell (1906–1974), featuring the fair’s Government Building
Associate conductor Eric DeLamarter, who conducted more than two-thirds of those concerts, led the first program on Sunday afternoon, July 1. He conducted the Orchestra in Wagner’s Huldigungsmarsch, Schubert’s Unfinished Symphony, Parlow’s arrangement of two of Brahms’s Hungarian Dances, Thomas’s Overture to Mignon, Tchaikovsky’s Capriccio italien, Glazunov’s Ruses d’amour, and dances from Borodin’s Prince Igor.
Guest conductors included Jerzy Bojanowski, Carl Bricken, Henry Hadley, Sir Hamilton Harty, Victor Kolar, Karl Krueger, Anthony A. Olis, Frank St. Leger, Willem van Hoogstraten, and Henry Weber. Several Orchestra members were featured as soloists, including concertmaster John Weicher, viola Clarence Evans, principal cello Daniel Saidenberg, cello Richard Wagner, principal bass Vaclav Jiskra, and principal harp Joseph Vito.
Frederick Stock led the final concert on Saturday evening, September 8, conducting his transcription of Bach’s Passacaglia and Fugue in C minor, Tchaikovsky’s Fifth Symphony, Ravel’s La valse, his arrangement of the love scene from act 2 of Wagner’s Tristan and Isolde, and Respighi’s Pines of Rome.
This article also appears here.
Adrian Da Prato, a member of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra’s violin section from 1946 until 1996, died on Tuesday, March 17, 2015, in Chicago. He was 94.
Born in Barga in 1920, in the region of Tuscany, Da Prato became fascinated with the sound of the violin while attending silent movies as a child in his native Italy. The films were accompanied by piano and violin, and his attention invariably would turn from the motion picture to the violinist in the pit.
Da Prato began violin lessons at age nine after his family arrived in America. In Chicago he attended Lane Technical High School and the American Conservatory of Music, two schools he remembered warmly for instilling enthusiasm through their mutual support and continuous exchange of ideas among talented students. His first teacher was Pellegro Pacini, and he later studied with Scott Willits and CSO concertmaster John Weicher.
After being inducted in the 33rd Infantry Division in World War II, Da Prato later was assigned to special services in Hawaii, where he was active in all facets of performing for the troops throughout the islands. He was a member of the Illinois Symphony Orchestra and the Civic Orchestra of Chicago before music director Désiré Defauw invited him to join the Chicago Symphony Orchestra in 1946.
Da Prato cherished his friendship with Carlo Maria Giulini, the Orchestra’s principal guest conductor from 1969 until 1972, which dated back to 1955 when the Italian maestro arrived in Chicago for his American debut. He spoke little English and Da Prato was asked to help translate for him; but, as he recalled, “There was no real problem, because the rapport between the Orchestra and Maestro Giulini was such that words really were not necessary.”
Da Prato also was a member of the Chicago Strings, which toured throughout the United States and Europe. Additionally, he performed in chamber ensembles and in many schools throughout Chicago. His violin was a Peter Guarnerius of Mantua, dated 1710.
After forty-nine years with the Orchestra and serving under seven music directors—Defauw, Artur Rodzinski, Rafael Kubelík, Fritz Reiner, Jean Martinon, Sir Georg Solti, and Daniel Barenboim—Da Prato retired in 1996. In his retirement, Da Prato was a member of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra Alumni Association for many years.
In an interview from the 1970s, Da Prato reflected on his time with the Orchestra. “When the players perform well—having been together, played together, lived together on tour, and seen each other every day—it helps enormously because we fit in. It’s just like a string quartet. You can have the four greatest players in the world, individually great, who will play together, but there must be that unity of purpose. Like an old bottle of wine, it has to have a good vintage to start out with, then it reaches a point where its fullness is realized. When an orchestra works together it grows; that is the beautiful experience. It is magic. It is a great orchestra.”
He is survived by his niece Paula Bertolozzi and several grandnieces, great-grandnieces, and great-grandnephews. There will be a funeral service on Friday, March 20, 2015, at Cumberland Chapels (8300 West Lawrence Avenue in Norridge) from 9:00 until 11:30 a.m., followed by mass at Our Lady Mother of the Church (8701 West Lawrence Avenue). In lieu of flowers, the family has requested donations to the Civic Orchestra of Chicago.
On May 9, 2014, we celebrate the 100th anniversary of the birth of Carlo Maria Giulini, a beloved presence on the Chicago Symphony’s podium from 1955 until 1978, including his tenure as the Orchestra’s first principal guest conductor from 1969 until 1972, during which he shared conducting duties with Georg Solti for the first overseas tour to Europe in 1971.
In October 1955, “Fritz Reiner delivered an unusually flattering message to the musicians assembled around him on Orchestra Hall’s stage. The orchestra would have a guest conductor the following week, Reiner said, but it would not be any run-of-the-mill substitute. ‘A very special person,’ is how Reiner described Giulini. That Reiner would heap praise upon a potential competitor caught his players off guard. ‘That’s the only time he ever made any comment like that, and boy was he right,’ said Adolph Herseth, the orchestra’s principal trumpet” (excerpt from Thomas D. Saler’s excellent biography of Giulini, Serving Genius).
Giulini made his United States debut in November 1955, leading two weeks of concerts with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. The first subscription week originally was to include Debussy’s La mer, but it was replaced at the last minute with Mussorgsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition. The programs for that first week were as follows:
Original program for the November 3 & 4, 1955, subscription concerts
November 2, 1955 (television concert filmed in WGN’s Studio Theatre)
VIVALDI/Moliniari The Four Seasons
John Weicher, violin
Dorothy Lane, harpsichord
November 3 & 4, 1955 (Orchestra Hall)
VIVALDI/Moliniari The Four Seasons
John Weicher, violin
Dorothy Lane, harpsichord
PIZZETTI Prelude to Fedra
MUSSORGSKY/Ravel Pictures at an Exhibition
November 8, 1955 (Orchestra Hall)
VIVALDI/Moliniari The Four Seasons
John Weicher, violin
Dorothy Lane, harpsichord
PIZZETTI Prelude to Fedra
DEBUSSY La mer
In the Chicago Tribune, Claudia Cassidy wrote: “For a time last night it looked as if we might remember Carlo Maria Giulini as the man who introduced Antonio Vivaldi’s enchanting music of ‘The Four Seasons’ to the Chicago Symphony’s repertory in Orchestra Hall. Then it became plain that we will remember Giulini as himself. This tall, slender young Italian from Milan’s La scala has sensitivity, imagination, and skill, and he has that extra, enkindling thing, the Promethean gift of fire” (the complete review is here).
On November 9, the Tribune printed an announcement that “Mr. Giulini’s ‘La mer’ [from Tuesday evening] was a performance of such distinction, being large, comprehensive, sweeping, and inspired, that the Thursday-Friday program have been altered to include it.” As a result, the Orchestra’s first performances of Giovanni Salviucci’s Introduction, Passacaglia, and Finale was delayed [Giulini would introduce the work to Chicago audiences in September 1969]. The programs for the second week were:
November 3 & 4, 1955, program bio
November 9, 1955 (television concert filmed in WGN’s Studio Theatre)
ROSSINI Overture to L’italiana in Algeri
HAYDN Symphony No. 94 in G Major (Surprise)
RAVEL Five Children’s Pieces from Mother Goose
November 10 & 11 (Orchestra Hall), & 14 (Pabst Theatre, Milwaukee), 1955
ROSSINI Overture to L’italiana in Algeri
HAYDN Symphony No. 94 in G Major (Surprise)
DEBUSSY La mer
RAVEL Five Children’s Pieces from Mother Goose
FALLA Three Dances from The Three-Cornered Hat
For Giulni’s second week, Cassidy wrote: “The orchestra played for him with the mobility in equilibrium that let him say what he had to say, whether that communication came in the Debussy, in the sunny charms of Haydn’s ‘Surprise’ Symphony, in the pale shimmer of Ravel’s fairy tale palette, or the black, boiling furies of the dances from ‘Tricorne,’ whose farruca had the fierce pride only the young Escudero could have hoped to rival” (complete review is here).
Giulini leading the Orchestra at the Folkets Hus in Stockholm, Sweden on September 15, 1971
Giulini’s final residency with the Orchestra was in March 1978, when he led three weeks of concerts. According to his program biography: “Next season Maestro Giulini begins a three-year term as music director of the Los Angeles Philharmonic.” (He went on to serve as the Philharmonic’s eighth music director until 1984.) The programs for his last appearances were as follows:
March 2, 3 & 4, 1978 (Orchestra Hall)
SCHUBERT/Webern Six German Dances, D. 820
SCHUBERT Symphony No. 8 in B Minor, D. 759 (Unfinished)
BRAHMS Violin Concerto in D Major, Op. 77
Isaac Stern, violin
March 16, 17 & 18, 1978
March 6, 1978 (Uihlein Hall, Milwaukee)
SCHUBERT Symphony No. 4 in C Minor, D. 417
BRAHMS Violin Concerto in D Major, Op. 77
Isaac Stern, violin
March 9, 10 & 11, 1978
GABRIELI Canzon à 4
GABRIELI/Thomas Sonata, pian’ e forte
MOZART Piano Concerto No. 24 in C Minor, K. 491
Sir Clifford Curzon, piano
DVOŘÁK Symphony No. 8 in G Major, Op. 88
March 16, 17 & 18, 1978
BEETHOVEN Overture to Egmont, Op. 84
BEETHOVEN Violin Concerto in D Major, Op. 61
Pina Carmirelli, vioin
SCHUBERT Symphony No. 4 in C Minor, D. 417
Oh yeah, he made some recordings with the Orchestra too. Stay tuned for part 2 . . .
Gina DiBello
The Chicago Symphony Orchestra recently announced Riccardo Muti‘s appointment of Gina DiBello to the Orchestra’s first violin section. She previously had served as principal second violin of the Minnesota Orchestra and as section first violin with the Detroit Symphony Orchestra, following studies at the Cleveland Institute of Music and The Juilliard School in New York.
Joseph DiBello (©Todd Rosenberg Photography)
Gina is a Chicago native and has a deep connection to the Orchestra, as she also is the daughter of CSO bass Joseph DiBello (and Lyric Opera of Chicago violin Bonita DiBello), marking only the second father-daughter combination in our history.
Joseph originally studied the bass but initially pursued a career as a pharmacist. He later resumed his musical studies and from 1969 until 1973, he served as principal bass of Philadelphia Lyric Opera and the Delaware Symphony Orchestra. In 1973, he was appointed to the bass section of the Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra, and in 1976 Sir Georg Solti invited him to join the bass section of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra.
Lynne Turner (©Todd Rosenberg Photography)
Lynne Turner—currently in her fifty-first season as second harp—also is a CSO legacy, as she is the daughter of former CSO violin Sol Turner (1905–1979). At the age of twenty-one, Lynne was appointed in 1962 by then-music director Fritz Reiner, following her studies with Alberto Salvi in Chicago and with Pierre Jamet at the Paris Conservatory.
Sol Turner
Joseph Vito
But we also have to mention the father-daughter combination of Joseph Vito (1887–1970) and Geraldine Vito Weicher (1915–2006). Joseph served as principal harp from 1927 until 1957, and Geraldine was second harp from 1940 until 1957. However, during that time the position of second harp was hired only on an as-needed basis and was not a fully rostered position until the beginning of the 1957-58 season.
Joseph began his career as a harpist at the age of nine, and at twenty, debuted with the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra under Emil Paur. He regularly performed with both the San Francisco and Cincinnati symphony orchestras before Frederick Stock hired him as principal harp for the Chicago Symphony Orchestra in 1927.
Geraldine Vito Weicher
Geraldine studied with her father, and she was a member of the Civic Orchestra from 1935 until 1938. She was also married to John Weicher (1904–1969), who spent forty-six years with the Orchestra from 1923 until 1969, serving as concertmaster, assistant concertmaster, principal second violin, personnel manager, and conductor of the Civic Orchestra.
Fathers and sons? Sisters? Brothers? Stay tuned . . .
from the archives 