The Toronto Symphony Orchestra
On April 23, 1923, at five p.m. the New Symphony Orchestra, with von Kunits at the baton, made its debut in Massey Hall. With an initial complement of some sixty players, it soon became the eighty-five member Toronto Symphony Orchestra in 1927, offering full-length concerts. After successful tours in Canada and the United States, audiences got bigger. Von Kunits brought the orchestra recognition and wide appeal. The excellence of his string section became the envy of other orchestras. Stokowski invited two of his pupils, Gesensway and Manny Roth, to join the Philadelphia Orchestra. By drawing into it some of the world's finest instrumentalists, Stokowski succeeded in creating the distinctive "Philadelphia sound" which brought his orchestra international acclaim. Another von Kunits's pupil of note was the U.S. composer Charles Wakefield Cadman, Canadian composers Harry Adaskin and Murray Adaskin. Indeed, von Kunits shaped a generation of string players, some of whom continued to play with the Toronto Symphony Orchestra in 1980.
After nine years of struggle to win a place for a first-rate orchestra in Canada, von Kunits died on October 8, 1931.
Von Kunits left behind a tradition of dedicated musicianship and a solid framework of two protentially fine orchestras—the Pittsburgh Symphony and the Toronto Symphony—an achievement often overlooked today. Conductor Sir Adrian Boult of the London Philarmonic Orchestra once said of von Kunits that he was "rehearsaing a soul without a body."
Read more about this topic: Luigi Von Kunits
Famous quotes containing the words symphony and/or orchestra:
“The truth is, as every one knows, that the great artists of the world are never Puritans, and seldom even ordinarily respectable. No virtuous man—that is, virtuous in the Y.M.C.A. sense—has ever painted a picture worth looking at, or written a symphony worth hearing, or a book worth reading, and it is highly improbable that the thing has ever been done by a virtuous woman.”
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