NBC Symphony Orchestra
The NBC Symphony Orchestra was an orchestra established in 1937 by General David Sarnoff of NBC. Sarnoff spared no expense in recruiting and training the orchestra. Artur Rodziński, a noted disciplinarian and task master in his own right, was hired to mould and train the new orchestra especially for conductor Arturo Toscanini. The French conductor Pierre Monteux was hired, as well, to help in the effort. It has been alleged that one of the purposes of creating the orchestra was to deflect a Congressional inquiry into broadcasting standards.[1]
Under Toscanini's direction, the orchestra's first broadcast concert aired from NBC's Studio 8H on Christmas Day, 1937. In addition to weekly broadcasts on the NBC Red and Blue networks, the NBC Symphony Orchestra made recordings of symphonic, choral and operatic music. Televised concerts began in 1948.
Toscanini led the NBC Symphony for 17 years. The orchestra toured South America with Toscanini in 1940 and the USA in 1950. It performed with a veritable who's who of the top conductors of the day, including Monteux, Ernest Ansermet, Erich Kleiber, Erich Leinsdorf, Charles Munch, Fritz Reiner, Leopold Stokowski, George Szell, Bruno Walter, a young Lorin Maazel and the promising young Italian conductor, Guido Cantelli. Upon Toscanini's retirement in the spring of 1954, NBC brought an end to the orchestra, much to Toscanini's distress.
Some NBC Symphony members went on to play with other orchestras, notably Frank Miller (first chair cello) and Leonard Sharrow (first chair bassoon) with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. However, many NBC Symphony Orchestra members regrouped to become the Symphony of the Air, making their first recording September 21, 1954, and giving their first public concert at the United Nations 9th Anniversary Celebration on October 24.[2] On November 14 they appeared on Leonard Bernstein's acclaimed Omnibus TV show about Beethoven's Fifth Symphony, and Bernstein led the Symphony of the Air during its first season. With an Asian tour under the auspices of the State Department and an attendance of 60,000 in the Catskills that summer, the first season was a huge success.
For nearly a decade, the Symphony of the Air and performed many concerts led by Leopold Stokowski, the orchestra's music director from 1955 to 1963. During this same period, the Symphony of the Air recorded (on Columbia, RCA, United Artists and Vanguard) under many famous conductors, including Bernstein, Monteux, Reiner, Stokowski, Walter, Thomas Beecham and Josef Krips, before it disbanded in 1963.
Listen to
- Toscanini and NBC Symphony Orchestra (1947): Berlioz' The Damnation of Faust (13 minutes)
- Toscanini and NBC Symphony Orchestra (1953): Beethoven's Eroica, Third Movement