Leopold Stokowski
Leopold Stokowski Anthony ( born April 18, 1882 in London, England; † September 13, 1977 in Nether Wallop, England; actually Antonin Leopold Stokowski Stanisław Bolesławowicz ) was an English- American conductor and arranger of classical music.
Life
Private
Stokowski made a secret of his parentage and his birth year, claiming, inter alia, that he was born in Krakow, Poland. His father was Polish, his mother Scottish (not, as is often claimed, Irin ). He was baptized by his Polish grandfather Leopold.
Stokowski was married three times until 1927 with the pianist and pedagogue Olga Samaroff until 1938 Evangeline Johnson, whose father was a founder of the pharmaceutical company Johnson & Johnson, and with whom he had two daughters sadja and Luba, last to actress Gloria Laura Vanderbilt. 1937/38, he was close to Greta Garbo.
The German actor Oliver Stokowski is his great-grandson.
Career and artistic nature
Originally organist, Stokowski was one of the most controversial, but also the most successful conductors of the 20th century. He studied from the age of fourteen at the Royal College of Music in London, including at Hubert Parry and Charles Villiers Stanford, 1903 Bachelor of Music at Queen 's College, Oxford and completed his education later in Berlin, Munich and Paris. He was in London and New York organist and choir director, and made his debut in Berlin in 1908. His breakthrough came in 1909 as the director of the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra. He gave over 7000 concerts and led it for more than 2,000 world premieres. For the dissemination of the works of contemporaries, he advocated unusually strong.
All his life he made himself a name as an arranger of works, inter alia, Hector Berlioz, and especially Johann Sebastian Bach, for example, the song Come, Sweet Death and the famous Toccata and Fugue in D minor BWV 565 for organ, he helped in large orchestral garb to overwhelming effect. In 1969 he conducted with the Saarbrücken Radio Symphony Orchestra in a TV recording for the ARD program his orchestral transcription of Bach's Passacaglia and Fugue in C minor BWV 582
As a " sound magician" celebrated and reviled for his intervention in the score or the original band line-up, he developed over the decades its own, very typical orchestral sound. He became a legend for his roles in Walt Disney's film Fantasia.
The pianist Glenn Gould described Stokowski as one of the few conductors who he admired and drew Ludwig van Beethoven's 5th Piano Concerto with him.
On the subject of "What is actually a conductor" he once remarked: Why conductors and generals are so old? Maybe it's the pleasure to impose his will.
Sound Recording
Stokowski created 1917-1977 over 700 recordings and influenced, inter alia, in stereophonic sound and recording on LP with technical developments.
Afterlife
In 1979, the Leopold Stokowski Society was founded. It has set itself the task of keeping alive the memory of Stokowski's life's work as well as to preserve and reissue its numerous music recordings.
Honors
In 1927 he was honored by the London Royal Philharmonic Society with the honorary membership. In 1977 he was awarded for his services to the music with the Grammy Trustees Award, jointly with Thomas Edison.