Frederick Stock

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Frederick Stock

Frederick Stock (born Friedrich August Stock; November 11, 1872, Jülich, Rhine Province – October 20, 1942, Chicago, Illinois) was a German conductor and composer, most famous for his 37-year tenure as music director of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra.

Biography

Born in Jülich, Germany, Stock was given his early musical education by his army bandmaster father. At the age of 14, he was admitted to the Cologne Conservatory as a student of violin and composition, where he counted composer Engelbert Humperdinck as one of his teachers and conductor Willem Mengelberg among his classmates. After graduating from the conservatory in 1890, Stock joined the Municipal Orchestra of Cologne as a violinist.

Career

In 1895, Stock met with Theodore Thomas, founder and first music director of the then fledgling Chicago Symphony Orchestra, who was to have a decisive impact on his future. Thomas, who was then visiting Germany in search of recruits for his new Chicago orchestra, auditioned Stock and hired him as a violist. Thomas soon realized, however, that his new violist was also a very talented conductor and, in 1899, Stock was promoted to assistant conductor.

After Thomas' death on January 4, 1905, Stock succeeded him as music director. That year, he wrote a symphonic poem Eines Menschenlebens Morgen, Mittag und Abend, dedicated to "Theodore Thomas and the Members of the Chicago Orchestra."[1] The work was first performed on April 7 and 8, 1905.

The orchestra's board of trustees had first approached Hans Richter, Felix Weingartner and Felix Mottl to succeed Thomas. But the board's executive committee met on April 11, 1905, and resolved: "Frederick Stock unanimously elected Conductor. Trustees voted that the Orchestra should now be known as 'The Theodore Thomas Orchestra.'"[2] (The ensemble's name was ultimately changed to Chicago Symphony Orchestra in 1913.)

Under Stock's direction, the Chicago Symphony became one of America's top orchestras, developing a distinctive brass sound already heard in the its first recordings. An enthusiast of modern music, Stock championed the works of many then modern composers including Gustav Mahler; Richard Strauss (who, at Theodore Thomas's invitation, had been the CSO's first-ever guest conductor on subscription concerts in April 1904); Stravinsky, whose Symphony in C was commissioned for the orchestra's 50th anniversary; Sergei Prokofiev, who was soloist in the world premiere of his Third Piano Concerto in Chicago (although he recorded it in 1932 with the London Symphony); Gustav Holst; Zoltán Kodály, whose Concerto for Orchestra was commissioned by Stock; Nikolai Myaskovsky, whose Symphony No. 21 was commissioned for the orchestra's 50th anniversary; Josef Suk; William Walton; Arthur Benjamin; George Enescu; and many others. But Stock's most memorable recordings were of Romantic repertory by Schubert, Schumann, Weber, Goldmark and Glazunov.

Stock's 37-year tenure as head of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra was surpassed in America only by Eugene Ormandy's lengthy directorship of the Philadelphia Orchestra. Soon after Stock's death in Chicago on 20 October 1942, Désiré Defauw was chosen as his successor.

In 1936, when Stock was less and less able to conduct himself, Hans Lange, formerly Toscanini's assistant in New York, was hired to conduct those CSO concerts Stock could no longer conduct. He remained at the CSO during Defauw's tenure, and was a mentor of Chicago composer Leon Stein.

Recorded legacy

In May 1916, the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, under Stock's baton, made its first set of recordings for the Columbia Graphophone Company label in Chicago (the specific location is not documented); the first piece recorded on May 1, 1916, was the Wedding March from Felix Mendelssohn's Incidental Music for A Midsummer Night's Dream. The orchestra later made its first electrical recordings for the Victor Talking Machine Company in December 1925, including superbly idiomatic performances of Karl Goldmark's In Springtime overture and Robert Schumann's First ("Spring") Symphony; these early recordings were made in Victor's Chicago studios and within a couple of years the orchestra was recorded in Orchestra Hall, its home. Abandoning recording for several years after 1930, the CSO then returned to Columbia for a long series of recordings, only to finally return to RCA Victor in 1941-1942 for its final series of recordings under Stock, whose last studio recording, Ernest Chausson's Symphony in B-flat, was released posthumously in 1943.

Notable recordings

  • Johann Sebastian Bach: Suite No. 2 in B minor, BWV 1067 (Ernst Liegl, flute [appointed CSO principal flute in 1928] (December 1927, Victor)
  • Johann Sebastian Bach: St. Anne Prelude and Fugue in E-flat major, BWV 552 (arr. Frederick Stock) (December 1941, Victor)
  • Ludwig van Beethoven: Piano Concerti Nos. 4 & 5 "Emperor" (with Artur Schnabel) (July 1942, Victor)
  • Arthur Benjamin: Overture to an Italian Comedy (December 1941, Victor)
  • Johannes Brahms: Hungarian Dances Nos. 17-21 (December 1926, Victor)
  • Johannes Brahms: Symphony No. 3, in F major, Op. 90 (New York, November 1940, Columbia)
  • Johannes Brahms: Tragic Overture, Op.81 (Chicago, 1941, Columbia)
  • Ernest Chausson: Symphony in B-Flat, opus 20 (1942, Victor)
  • Ernő Dohnányi: Suite in F-sharp minor, Opus 19 (December 1928, Victor; world premiere recording)
  • Antonín Dvořák: In Nature's Realm Overture, Op.91 (December 1941, Victor)**
  • Sir Edward Elgar: Pomp and Circumstance March No.1, in D (December 1926, Victor)
  • George Enescu: Rumanian Rhapsody No.1 (April 1941, Columbia)
  • Karl Goldmark: In Springtime Overture, Op. 36 (December 1925, Victor)**
  • Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart: Symphony No. 38 in D major, K. 504 "Prague" (November 1939, Columbia)
  • Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart: Symphony No. 40 in G minor, K. 550 (December 1930, Victor)
  • Nicolo Paganini: Moto perpetuo, Op.11 (orch. Stock) (April 1941, Columbia)
  • Camille Saint-Saëns: Cello Concerto No.1, in A minor, Op.33 (with Gregor Piatigorsky) (March 1940, Columbia)
  • Camille Saint-Saëns: Danse Macabre, Op.40 (January 1940, Columbia)
  • Franz Schubert: Symphony No. 9 in C major, D. 944 "The Great" (January 1940, Columbia)**
  • Robert Schumann: Symphony No.1 in B-flat, Op.38 "Spring" (December 1929, Victor)**
  • Robert Schumann: Symphony No.4 in D minor, Op.120 (April 1941, Columbia)**
  • Jean Sibelius: The Swan of Tuonela (from the Four Legends of the Kalevala, Op.22) (November 1939 or January 1940, Columbia)
  • Frederick Stock: Symphonic Waltz, Op.8 (December 1930, Victor)
  • Richard Strauss: Also Sprach Zarathustra, Op. 30 (January, 1940, Columbia)
  • Richard Strauss: On the Shores of Sorrento from Aus Italien, Op.16 (December 1941, Victor)
  • Josef Suk: Folk Dance (à la Polka) from A Fairy Tale (December 1926, Victor)
  • Peter Ilich Tchaikovsky: The Nutcracker - Suite, Op. 71a (November 1939, Columbia)
  • Peter Ilich Tchaikovsky: Symphony No. 5, in E minor, Op. 64 (December 1928, Victor)
  • Peter Ilich Tchaikovsky: Violin Concerto, Op. 35 (with Nathan Milstein) (March 1940, Columbia)
  • Ernst Toch: Pinocchio - A Merry Overture (April 1941, Columbia)
  • Richard Wagner: Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg - Prelude to Act I (December 1926, Victor)
  • William Walton: Scapino - A Comedy Overture (April 1941, Columbia)
  • Carl Maria von Weber: Euryanthe - Overture (January 1940, Columbia)**
  • Johannes Brahms: Tragic Overture and Minuet from Serenade No. 1 (c. 1940, Columbia) **
  • Aleksandr Glazunov: Concert Waltzes in F major and D major (c. 1940, Columbia)**

Entries ending with ** are particularly outstanding interpretations of emotionally expressive Romantic repertory that was Stock's special stock in trade. [3]

External links

References

  1. ↑ Philo Adams Otis. The Chicago Symphony Orchestra: Its Organization, Growth and Development 1891-1924, p. 168
  2. ↑ Philo Adams Otis. The Chicago Symphony Orchestra: Its Organization, Growth and Development 1891-1924, p. 168
  3. ↑ http://groups.yahoo.com/group/worldeducationclub/message/37963
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