New York Philharmonic

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Company Perspectives: Founded in 1842 by a group of local musicians led by American-born Ureli Corelli Hill, the New York Philharmonic is by far the oldest symphony orchestra in the United States and one of the oldest in the world. In continuous operation throughout two-thirds of our nation's history, the Philharmonic has played a leading role in American musical life and development. In 2002-03, the Philharmonic celebrated its 160th anniversary. Currently, the Orchestra plays some 180 concerts a year, most of them in Avery Fisher Hall, Lincoln Center, during its September-to-June subscription season. Key Dates: 1842: New York Philharmonic is founded as cooperative society. 1886: Orchestra moves to Metropolitan Opera House. 1909: Philharmonic changes corporate structure from cooperative to nonprofit subsidized orchestra. 1911: Joseph Pulitzer wills money to Philharmonic for use as an endowment. 1928: Philharmonic merges with Symphony Society and becomes Philharmonic-Symphony Society of New York, Inc. 1930: Philharmonic takes first tour of Europe. 1962: Orchestra moves from Carnegie Hall to Lincoln Center. 1991: Kurt Masur becomes Music Director. 2002: Lorin Maazel succeeds Masur.

Incorporated: 1842 as New York Philharmonic Society
NAIC: 711130 Musical Groups and Artists

Philharmonic-Symphony Society of New York, Inc., better known as the New York Philharmonic, is the oldest symphony orchestra in the United States and one of the world's most prestigious. The group began as a small cooperative of local musicians and rose to become the leading orchestra of the nation's cultural capital, New York City. The group is housed in New York's vast performing arts complex, Lincoln Center. The New York Philharmonic gives approximately 180 concerts a year, and tours both the United States and abroad. The group is financed through subscriptions and ticket sales, government grants, an endowment fund, and through corporate and individual charitable donations. The New York Philharmonic has long attracted all the biggest names in classical music as soloists and conductors. Its long roster of famed conductors includes Arturo Toscanini, Leonard Bernstein, Zubin Mehta, and Kurt Masur. Since 2002, the orchestra has been led by Music Director Lorin Maazel.

The orchestra now known as the New York Philharmonic began as a cooperative of professional musicians, the New York Philharmonic Society, which banded together to provide three concerts a year to subscribers. The group was organized by violinist and conductor Ureli Corelli Hill and other musicians. Proceeds of the orchestra's season were divided equally among the members. The New York Philharmonic gave its first performance in a rented hall called the Apollo Rooms in December 1842, playing what was only the second New York hearing of Beethoven's Fifth Symphony. New York was a growing metropolis, already one of the ten largest cities in the world, and it boasted a strong cohort of musicians, many of them immigrants from Germany. In 1842, larger orchestras of more than 60 players were becoming quite popular. The Philharmonic Society began with 70 members, about 40 percent of them of German origin. In its first year, the group brought in $1,855, and in its second year raised that to almost $2,500. As ticket sales increased, the cooperative paid out a bigger dividend to its members, and also put money aside for members in need--the rudiments of a health benefits and pension plan.

The young orchestra was an immediate success. It brought in as a soloist one of the world's leading violinists, Henri Vieuxtemps, in 1843, and invited such illustrious guest conductors as Louis Spohr and Felix Mendelssohn (neither Spohr nor Mendelssohn was able to travel to New York, but they did become honorary members of the cooperative.) The group played what was cutting-edge contemporary music of the era: Beethoven, Hummel, Rossini, Berlioz and Verdi. Encouraged by its warm reception in New York, the orchestra made plans to build a permanent concert hall for itself. To aid in fundraising (and collection of debts), the group decided to incorporate. With some governmental foot dragging, this finally occurred in February, 1853. By its 1856-57 season, the orchestra was bringing in as much as $14,000 annually. Ticket sales grew when it decided to admit women as subscribers in 1847, and then to allow single ticket sales for friends of season subscribers. The group weathered financial panics, fires, and the Civil War, as well as competition from other orchestras and glamorous soloists in New York.

The New York Philharmonic had an array of conductors in its early years, and played at many different venues. In 1879 it hired conductor Theodore Thomas, who brought some stability to the group by remaining its head until 1891. Thomas had been the conductor of the Brooklyn Philharmonic, and that group had siphoned off many of the New York Philharmonic's best players. The two groups often performed on the same night, and contemporary critics generally preferred the Brooklyn ensemble. The New York Philharmonic enticed Thomas with the princely salary of $2,500. His tenure was a time of growing financial stability for the Philharmonic Society. It moved to better quarters in the just-built Metropolitan Opera House in 1886. In 1891, Thomas abruptly decamped to Chicago. He was replaced with the Hungarian-American conductor Anton Seidl. Seidl was well-respected by critics and audiences. He notably premiered Anton Dvorak's Ninth Symphony, the American-influenced "From the New World," in 1893.

The New York Philharmonic Society maintained its cooperative governing structure until 1909. Yet as early as the 1880s, the group's direction was influenced by wealthy New York patrons. The Society's president handled the business affairs of the group, and this position had been filled by professional musicians until 1867, when a chemist, R. Ogden Doremus, took the job. Doremus and other succeeding presidents were devoted music-lovers, though not professionals. In the 1880s, the job of president was filled by a series of extremely prominent New Yorkers, known for their great wealth. International banker Joseph Drexel held the post from 1881 to 1888, when the job passed to corporate lawyer E. Francis Hyde. In 1902, the Philharmonic's presidency passed to one of the most prominent men in the nation, Andrew Carnegie. The orchestra had found a new home in the concert hall Carnegie endowed, Carnegie Hall, in 1893 (after the Metropolitan Opera House was destroyed by fire.) Under Carnegie's leadership, the Philharmonic Society began to invest in European celebrity conductors. The orchestra had made do with two unpopular conductors after the sudden death of Anton Seidl in 1898, and ticket receipts fell. Carnegie came up with a plan to give the orchestra a large permanent endowment fund, and to bring in exciting guest conductors from Europe. Instead of one principal conductor, the Philharmonic's season was split among as many as seven European superstars. Then from 1906 to 1909, the orchestra had one principal conductor, the Russian Vassily Safonoff.

Though the Philharmonic brought in exciting and world famous conductors, it was not the only high-caliber orchestra in the region. Walter Damrosch, who had led the New York Philharmonic for one miserable season, had his own acclaimed orchestra in the city, the Symphony Society of New York. The Metropolitan Opera was also enjoying enormous success in the early years of the 20th century. Boston and Pittsburgh too had large symphony orchestras with dynamic leaders. The New York Philharmonic often suffered from the comparison when these orchestras toured New York.

By the 1890s, the orchestra was relying increasingly on substitutes rather than actual members to play its concerts. By 1909, out of the 100-piece orchestra, only 37 players were Philharmonic Society members. The orchestra had ballooning expenses as it paid thousands of dollars in advertising. Its big-name conductors and soloists were paid for out of separate funds raised by its philanthropist board members, while the members' dividends remained modest, and many played dance music at other venues to make ends meet. The orchestra's cooperative governing structure was seeming less and less able to meet the group's needs.

In 1909, the Philharmonic's wealthy backers took over the orchestra in order to guarantee its continued existence. Elections for board members were suspended, and business affairs were instead turned over to a Committee of Guarantors. These Guarantors were able to put up tens of thousands of dollars of their own money towards the orchestra's expenses, and in exchange, the committee gained the authority to hire the conductor and business manager, and to contract with the musicians. The orchestra players were guaranteed a salary of $35 a week. The Philharmonic Society voted to suspend its old governance system, and the group became, like most of its competitors, a professional orchestra subsidized by wealthy backers. The new governors immediately made waves by hiring none other than composer Gustav Mahler as the Philharmonic's next conductor. Mahler brought in his own concertmaster and made many other changes in personnel. Mahler took the orchestra on tour for the first time, and offered an expanded menu of concerts, including a series in Brooklyn and a series of "educational" Sunday concerts.

Mahler was apparently too radical in his musical tastes for New York, and audiences shrank. He died in 1911 and was replaced by Josef Stransky. The orchestra had changed greatly under Mahler's leadership, with very few of the pre-1909 players left in the orchestra. On its sounder financial footing, the orchestra was now able to guarantee its players a decent salary, and to play more concerts and tour. In 1911, the newspaper magnate Joseph Pulitzer died, and willed the New York Philharmonic $500,000 plus other sums, to be used as a permanent endowment. This was another crucial step in guaranteeing the orchestra's future and the expansion of its capabilities. The Philharmonic made its first recordings in 1917, and reached broader audiences through radio beginning in 1923. The orchestra also began a summer stadium concert series, which ran from 1922 until 1951, and began offering special children's concerts in 1924. In 1928 the Philharmonic finessed a merger with one of its major New York competitors, the National Symphony Orchestra. The group, though still colloquially known as the New York Philharmonic, took the official name the Philharmonic-Symphony Society of New York.

After the merger with the National Symphony Orchestra, the New York Philharmonic came into its own as the New York orchestra. Following several seasons under principal conductor Willem Mengelberg and various guest conductors, the Philharmonic landed the most acclaimed conductor of the era, Arturo Toscanini. After sharing the top billing with Mengelberg, Toscanini became the principal conductor in 1930, when he took the group on its first European tour. Toscanini was the most charismatic of conductors, handsome, with a terrible temper, known for the purity and discipline of his interpretations. He brought enormous crowds to Carnegie Hall. Nevertheless, during the years of the Great Depression, the Philharmonic found itself in financial difficulties. Toscanini was paid a high salary, reputedly $100,000 for ten weeks of performances, and ticket sales tended to die down for the part of the season when the great man was not on the podium. The orchestra players agreed to a 10 percent pay cut in the early 1930s, giving them on average about $90 a week for a 30-week season. Yet by 1934, the Philharmonic's financial position had grown so precarious that the group started an emergency fundraising campaign. The orchestra hoped to raise $500,000 in order to meet immediate needs. Other arts groups in the city also suffered from the severe economic cutbacks of the time. As an economizing measure, it was suggested that the New York Philharmonic and the Metropolitan Opera merge. But Toscanini did not approve, and the merger plans were abandoned.

Toscanini left the Philharmonic in 1936. He was replaced by a much more modest conductor, the Englishman John Barbirolli. He was principal conductor from 1936 to 1941. During that time, the orchestra retrenched. It brought its number of players down to 102 from 107, played a 24-week season instead of 30, and cut costs by almost 25 percent, mostly by saving on guest conductor and guest artist fees. The orchestra returned to financial stability by the late 1930s, and the Philharmonic went on several lengthy tours.

During World War II, the Philharmonic played at military camps, bases, and hospitals. Members of the orchestra were able to donate two ambulances to the Red Cross. The Philharmonic was headed by a series of guest conductors after Barbirolli left in 1941, and then it hired Artur Rodzinski in 1943 as principal conductor and Musical Director. Rodzinski remained in place until 1949, presiding over a time of relative financial ease for the Philharmonic. The orchestra instituted a formal pension plan in 1944, which was a model for orchestras across the nation. The orchestra also began broadcasting summer Sunday radio concerts nationwide during Rodzinski's tenure, supplementing existing fall and winter broadcasts. The summer broadcast concerts featured some of the leading soloists and guest conductors of the time, and led to a grand tour of 17 states in the summer of 1947.

Rodzinski resigned in 1947, and the job of principal conductor went to the eminent German Bruno Walter. Walter also took the title of Musical Adviser (sic), overseeing a very broad repertoire and an assortment of guest conductors. Walter was already in his 70s when he took the post, and he had apparently not planned to stay for long with the Philharmonic. Two conductors, Leopold Stokowski and Dimitri Mitropoulos, shared the principal conductor role for the 1949 to 1950 season. Mitropoulos was principal conductor alone from 1950 to 1957. One of the most significant changes in the orchestra's history came in the mid-1950s, when it finalized plans to leave its home in Carnegie Hall and move to a proposed new midtown arts center, Lincoln Center.

The Philharmonic's management had been involved in planning for a new arts center since at least 1953. A section of midtown Manhattan known as Lincoln Square was to be razed, and various groups came together to propose building a performing arts complex there. The Philharmonic's home, Carnegie Hall, was scheduled to be knocked down, and the orchestra thus was under pressure to find new quarters by 1959. A nonprofit group, Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts, Inc., incorporated in 1956, and ground was broken for the new center in 1959. The Philharmonic moved into its new home, Lincoln Center's Philharmonic Hall, in 1962.

The new Philharmonic Hall at first proved a big disappointment. Carnegie Hall was at the last minute saved from the wrecking ball, and audiences and performers alike wistfully recalled the warmer acoustics of the old place. The new hall had been meticulously engineered, but it was nevertheless not acoustically balanced, and a few months after it opened, it had to undergo a substantial overhaul. One of the Philharmonic's frequent guest conductors, George Szell, gave this scathing account of the result of the refurbishment (as quoted in Howard Shanet, Philharmonic: A History of New York's Orchestra): "Imagine a woman, lame, a hunchback, cross-eyed and with two warts. They've removed the warts." More changes were made in 1964 and 1965. Finally a three-month, $1.25 million renovation in 1969 made the hall, now Avery Fisher Hall, a satisfying place to play and hear music. The hall was redesigned yet again in 1976.

During the years the Philharmonic was moving into its new quarters, it gained a new conductor, the American Leonard Bernstein. Bernstein had been an assistant conductor with the Philharmonic in 1943 when he was 25 years old, and the young man had made a thrilling debut, filling in at the last minute for Bruno Walter. Bernstein was a flamboyant, warm-hearted conductor, one of the few American conductors the orchestra had ever had, and his character was very much attuned to the times. He became well-known to television audiences, and he was immensely popular as the conductor of the Philharmonic's children's concerts and free concerts in the park. Bernstein, a composer himself, championed American music in a way few of the Philharmonic's conductors had. During his tenure, the orchestra vastly increased the number of concerts it gave. Its subscription series was generally completely sold out during the 1960s, and the Philharmonic's free outdoor concerts attracted huge audiences. One outdoor concert in 1966, with Bernstein conducting Beethoven and Stravinsky, attracted an audience estimated at more than 75,000 people.

The New York Philharmonic became firmly identified with Bernstein, who embodied a certain verve and glow that made him enduringly popular. The orchestra made as many as 200 recordings under Bernstein. These sold well, and royalties from recordings became a significant source of income for the Philharmonic Society. The orchestra expanded its repertoire in the Bernstein years, playing everything from Baroque music to electronic compositions to musical theater. Bernstein also stretched the roster of guest conductors the orchestra called on, bringing in many canonical European conductors such as Nadia Boulanger and Herbert van Karajan and varied composer-conductors such as Aaron Copland, Duke Ellington, and Darius Milhaud.

The orchestra reached a musical high point under Bernstein. Nevertheless, it was not free of financial worries. It had greatly expanded its programming, and by the end of the 1960s its musicians had a 52-week contract. Expenses always outran income, though the gap was made up by contributions from patrons and from the Philharmonic's endowment. In 1969, the Philharmonic banded together with the four other leading American orchestras--the Boston Symphony, the Chicago Symphony, the Cleveland Orchestra, and the Philadelphia Orchestra--and hired a management consultant firm to analyze the financial outlook of the groups. Of the five, the New York Philharmonic was in the best financial shape. The others were all running deficits, while the Philharmonic had a small surplus. But the economic picture such organizations presented was not bright. The five-orchestra group, led by the Philharmonic's board president, decided to petition the federal government for aid through the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA). Despite the federal government's own fiscal worries, in 1970 President Nixon signed a bill authorizing some $40 million for the NEA. Only a small percentage of this actually reached the Philharmonic, but it represented a milestone in U.S. government support of symphony orchestras. The New York Philharmonic on its own then asked the New York state legislature for a grant. To its immense surprise, the legislature complied with a broad appropriation to go to many of the state's nonprofit arts groups. The fundraising and business aspect of running the Philharmonic had become so complex by the early 1970s that the board decided for the first time to make the job of president a full-time salaried position. Back when the post had been filled by such figures as Andrew Carnegie, it was not considered a full-time job but an extra obligation, and wealthy men like Carnegie had no need of a salary from the Philharmonic Society. The hiring of a salaried executive was a sign that running the Philharmonic had become much more daunting.

Leonard Bernstein conducted his farewell concert in 1969. He was followed by several guest conductors, until Pierre Boulez took over in 1971. Boulez presided until 1978. He was known as a daring modernist, and he presented quite a contrast with Bernstein. Subscription sales dropped somewhat during Boulez's tenure. He was followed in 1978 by Zubin Mehta. From the mid-1970s to the late 1980s, the orchestra grew and prospered in many ways. Salaries for the players rose markedly. In the mid-1970s, the annual minimum salary for a Philharmonic player was just under $20,000. The minimum rose to almost $60,000 by 1990. The number of season ticket subscribers also grew, from a little more than 27,000 for the 1977-78 season to more than 37,000 subscribers in 1990. The orchestra's endowment fund rose from under $10 million in the mid-1970s to $69 million by 1990. Audiences seemed to appreciate Mehta's warmth. He enjoyed a very long stay as principal conductor, leaving in 1991, when he was replaced by Kurt Masur.

When Mehta resigned, so did the Philharmonic's managing director, who had been with the orchestra since 1975. The new managing director, Deborah Borda, came to a difficult task of keeping balance between the orchestra's artistic needs and financial possibilities. Government support for the Philharmonic dropped off in the 1990s, as many arts groups across the country turned increasingly to private donations. The Philharmonic maintained balanced budgets through the mid-1990s, though not without work. Many orchestras, both large like the Philharmonic and smaller regional groups, suffered poor labor relations in the 1990s, with strikes, lockouts, bitterly contested pay cuts, and much wrangling over the cost of health benefits. The New York Philharmonic came close to a strike over contract negotiations in 1995, while in 1996 and 1997 the orchestras in Atlanta, Philadelphia, and San Francisco all walked off the job. In 1997, the Philharmonic players signed a six-year contract, though three-year contracts were the industry norm. The contract guaranteed small annual increases in base pay and pensions for most players. The long contract gave the orchestra more years in which it did not have to worry about contentious financial issues.

The orchestra seemed to do well in many ways under Kurt Masur. Joseph Horowitz, writing in the New York Times (September 15, 2002), stated, "For the first time in memory, the orchestra can be depended upon to play with virtuosity and commitment, and not merely when the boss is in charge." But the critic also noted that there had been times when Masur had "stopped conducting, and even left the podium, because the Philharmonic's listeners were quite audibly not listening." Jay Nordlinger, writing for the National Review (July 23, 2001), summed up Masur's stay at the Philharmonic similarly as one of mixed effect, saying "Masur has made this orchestra one of the mightiest in the world, restoring a glory that had been lost. Yet he has been grossly underappreciated here, by his own management, his own players, and the city's critics." Masur was first scheduled to leave in 1998, apparently because of friction between the conductor, the Philharmonic's board, and the players. He then extended his contract through 2002 while the orchestra looked for a replacement.

Masur was followed by the American conductor Lorin Maazel. Maazel had led the Cleveland Orchestra for ten years and was one of the grand names in the international orchestral scene, yet he had not appeared as a guest conductor for the Philharmonic since the 1970s. Maazel seemed to quickly make his mark on the orchestra, and he boasted to the press that subscription ticket sales had risen by 4 percent in his first month as Music Director. The next order of business was apparently to get the orchestra a new hall, as the Philharmonic's Avery Fisher Hall was still plagued by less than satisfactory acoustics. In June 2003, the Philharmonic announced that it was leaving Lincoln Center and moving back to Carnegie Hall. The orchestra and the nonprofit that ran Carnegie Hall would then merge. The decision was prompted in part by a consultant's report on the cost of rebuilding or renovating Avery Fisher Hall, which made moving out seem like the most economical option.

Yet a mere four months later, Carnegie Hall's management and the orchestra announced that the merger plans were off. The Philharmonic was scheduled to remain at Lincoln Center until at least 2011, and Avery Fisher Hall would undergo extensive refitting. The next year, the Philharmonic announced that it had extended Lorin Maazel's contract through 2009. Maazel had originally planned on staying only four years, or through 2006. But the Philharmonic Society's managing director claimed that Maazel was unexpectedly happy at the podium, and he and all other parties involved wanted him to stay on. Also in 2004, the orchestra's musicians ratified another three-year labor contract, assuring some stability to the group.

Further Reading

Conrad, Willa J., "Harmony Reigns with N.Y. Philharmonic Pact," Star-Ledger (Newark, N.J.), December 20, 1997, p. 37.

Gates, David, "The Philharmonic's New 'Admiral' Takes Command," Newsweek, July 9, 2001, p. 56.

Horowitz, Joseph, "Anybody Listening? A Hapless History," New York Times, September 15, 2002, sec. 2, p. 28.

Isherwood, Charles, "N.Y. Phil, Carnegie Hall Scuttle Wedding Plans," Daily Variety, October 8, 2003, p. 4.

Kozinn, Allan, "Philharmonic Appoints Its New Chairman," New York Times, September 18, 1996, p. C15.

------, "Who Pulled the Big Five's Plug?" New York Times, February 7, 1993, p. H1.

Malitz, Nancy, "Arriving on the Fast Track," New York Times, September 15, 1991, p. H25.

"New York Philharmonic's New Conductor Says Sales Up," Europe Intelligence Wire, October 21, 2002.

Nordlinger, Jay, "Mere Excellence," National Review, July 23, 2001.

Pogrebin, Robin, and Ralph Blumenthal, "Philharmonic Deal, Completed Quickly, Left Some in Dark," New York Times, June 3, 2003, pp. A1, B7.

Rockwell, John, "Administrator Quits Philharmonic," New York Times, October 6, 1990, p. 11.

Shanet, Howard, Philharmonic: A History of New York's Orchestra, New York: Doubleday & Co., 1975.

Smith, Patrick J., "Filling the Philharmonic's Podium," New Criterion, April 2001, p. 52.

"3-Year Deal for N.Y. Philharmonic," Star-Ledger (Newark, N.J.), October 13, 2004, p. 41.

Tindall, Blair, "The Plight of the White-Tie Worker," New York Times, July 4, 2004.

— A. Woodward

American orchestra founded in 1842; it was first conducted by Ureli Corelli Hill (with D.-G. Etienne and H. C. Timm). Its home is Avery Fisher Hall at Lincoln Center. In the 1920s it absorbed other orchestras, including the New York SO, and became the Philharmonic-Symphony Society Orchestra. It has had many renowned conductors (including Mengelberg, Furtwängler and Walter) and a changing repertory: Bernstein (1958-69) gave new American works, Boulez (1971-8) introduced unfamiliar works from the 18th century to the 20th, Mehta (1978-91) returned to mainly standard repertory. Masur became music director in 1991. Broadcasts began in 1922, children's concerts in 1924 tours abroad in 1930 (with Toscanini). Seasons include free park concerts and festivals.

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• Genres: Classical

Biography

The oldest and most famous of all major American orchestras, the New York Philharmonic is the definitive international-level orchestra in America, compared on occasion with the Berlin Philharmonic. For much of this century, it has been the most prestigious of American orchestras, if not universally praised at all times. The orchestra's chief conductors, music advisors, and music directors since the 1920s is a list of musical legends, the presence of any one of which in the history of other orchestras would be a more than sufficient honor: Gustav Mahler, Willem Mengelberg, Arturo Toscanini, Sir John Barbirolli, Bruno Walter, Dimitri Mitropoulos, Leonard Bernstein, Pierre Boulez, and, currently, Kurt Masur. And its recordings, beginning in the '20s under Mengelberg, were among the most honored of their era, while those from the '60s during the tenure of Bernstein as music director, are also among the best-selling classical records ever made in America.

The New York Philharmonic as we know it today is actually the result of the union of two major orchestras founded during the 19th century which, in turn, absorbed the best elements of other New York orchestras that didn't survive. Their combined history goes back over 150 years.

There were amateur orchestras in New York in the 18th century, and these began to multiply in profusion in the beginning of the 19th century. In 1824, there appeared in New York the Philharmonic Society, comprised of members of the city's theater orchestras, which gave concerts for several years -- their debut featured the first New York performance of the final movement of Beethoven's Symphony No. 2; and in 1825 an unidentified ensemble performed the New York premieres of Beethoven's The Creatures of Prometheus and Egmont overture.

In 1842, the Philharmonic Symphony Society of New York was founded by a small group of talented and dedicated musicians. Their first concert, featuring an orchestra of 63 musicians conducted by U.C. Hill and a program that included Beethoven's Symphony No. 5 (which had first been played in America only two years earlier), took place in December of 1842. The orchestra's first official season, in 1843, included three concerts, the second of which was highlighted by the first American performance of Beethoven's Symphony No. 3. Three years later, the orchestra also gave the American premiere of Beethoven's Symphony No. 9 before an audience of 2,000 people.

For the next 16 years, the Philharmonic Symphony Society gave four concerts annually. In 1859 they expanded their season to five performances, and then, in 1869, to six concerts. Members of the orchestra usually served as conductors during the early years, until 1852 when Theodore Eisfeld was elected director, a post he held for 15 years. By 1867, the number of players had expanded to 100.

The orchestra's membership and repertory were heavily steeped in mainstream European repertory which, in those days, included much Beethoven and Brahms, Wagner, Johann Strauss II, and Franz Liszt, and relatively little (by today's standards) Bach and Mozart, and very little of American origin. The standard of playing was very high for the era, and the Philharmonic Society was the most respected of serious orchestras. There were rivals during the second half of the 19th century, however, including a Brooklyn Philharmonic that was founded in 1857 (Brooklyn was then a separate city, incidentally); an orchestra organized by conductor Louis Jullien that performed lighter programs that included works by American composers, which proved very popular; and Theodore Thomas led a New York-based orchestra from the 1860s to the 1890s that was not only popular in the city but toured the country, doing programs that included Bach, Saint-Saens, Mozart, and Mendelssohn.

The most significant competitor to the Philharmonic Society, however, was the New York Symphony, founded in 1878 by Leopold Damrosch, who was also the orchestra's conductor until his death in 1885, after which his son Walter took over at the podium and as president. In those days, the city was in an absolute musical ferment that would make modern audiences green with envy, as orchestras competed for the first performances of such works as the Brahms Symphony No. 1 and the Saint-Saens Piano Concerto No. 2.

Leopold Damrosch may have intended to outdo all rivals, with a performance of a Berlioz mass featuring 1,500 musicians in 1881, but then a year later, Thomas led 3,200 players and singers in a concert. After succeeding his father, Walter Damrosch proved every bit as ambitious and daring a leader, and musical life in the city had never been as active before. Additionally, from 1887 onward, New York was visited frequently by the Boston Symphony Orchestra, and later by the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, and the Philadelphia Orchestra began making regular concert appearances in New York starting in 1903. There was also a Russian Symphony Orchestra from 1904 until 1918, which debuted numerous works by Rachmaninoff, Scriabin, and Rimsky-Korsakov, and an Italian Symphony Orchestra that appeared in 1913.

Ultimately, the New York Symphony won out over Thomas' ensemble by wooing the support of wealthy New Yorkers such as Andrew Carnegie, whose patronage gave them advantages in both fundraising and press exposure. Finally, in 1891, Thomas packed up for Chicago -- to found the Chicago Symphony Orchestra -- and the New York Symphony was left as the sole competitor to the Philharmonic Society. While the Philharmonic achieved greater critical respect, however, the Symphony was beloved for its more daring and adventurous programming, mixing French and American pieces with that standard Germanic fare common to both orchestras. And the Carnegie patronage paid off in a big way -- which is still providing benefits to the musical world -- in 1891 with the opening of Carnegie Hall, built expressly for the New York Symphony. Damrosch's own reputation, as a leader as well as a conductor, was such that he served as conductor of the Philharmonic Society during its 1902-1903 season. Meanwhile, the New York Symphony had achieved such respect by then, that no less a figure than Felix Weingartner was enticed to serve as guest conductor.

The New York Symphony was reorganized as the New York Symphony Orchestra in 1903, and again in 1907, when the modern structure of the orchestra was put into place, including a board of directors and regular salaries for the players. The orchestra quickly became a vital institution in the musical life of the entire country, playing on tour to audiences who had never before heard a full symphony orchestra. In 1920, it became the first American orchestra ever to tour Europe, and was a resounding success. During the '20s, there began a parade of renowned and legendary conductors as guests at its podium, including Bruno Walter, Fritz Busch, Vincent d'Indy, Maurice Ravel, and Albert Coates.

The Philharmonic Society survived during the early 20th century as a relatively sedate, highly praised ensemble, and was remarkably successful in wooing some of the most talented conductors from Europe to its podium. The most notable of these was Gustav Mahler, who served as the orchestra's conductor from 1909 until 1911 -- his tenure there was more successful and far less stormy than his conductorship of the Metropolitan Opera, and it is possible to hear some of the surviving Philharmonic Society players discuss Mahler on a Pickwick compact disc devoted to his piano roll recordings of his own work.

The Philharmonic Society merged with the New (aka National) Symphony Orchestra in 1921, and in doing so boosted both its subscribership and its concert schedule, to the point where the responsibilities for conducting finally had to be divided up among three musicians, where one had sufficed in prior years. Among the those legendary figures who graced the podium in the years that followed were Mengelberg (1921-1930), Furtwangler (1925-1927), Toscanini (1927-1933), Erich Kleiber (1930-1932), and Walter (1931-1933). Throughout the '20s, the Philharmonic Society absorbed several smaller orchestras, including the City Symphony, the American National Orchestra, and the State Symphony Orchestra, all of which enhanced its own resources and reduced the competition.

Finally, in 1928, the modern New York Philharmonic was created with the merger of the Philharmonic Society and the New York Symphony Orchestra, into the Philharmonic-Symphony Society Orchestra, later the Philharmonic-Symphony Orchestra of New York and, finally, the New York Philharmonic. The merging of the two institutions created a musical powerhouse the like of which had never been heard in New York before, combining the powerful and conservative performing tradition of the Philharmonic Society with the more forward looking, progressive approach of the New York Symphony. Ever since, the New York Philharmonic has sought to balance these two sides, juxtaposing a commitment to the core Classical/Romantic repertory with an obligation to perform (and commission) new works by living composers.

Toscanini became the new orchestra's principal conductor, for a 28-week, 103-concert season, the longest in the Philharmonic's history. It was a perfect marriage in its time, in terms of personalities and reputations. Toscanini was one of the most lionized conductors in the world, and far better known to the world at large than the Philharmonic -- indeed, he was probably the only conductor in the world whose name was widely known to people who didn't go to concerts or listen to classical music. Within the musical world, he was known for his conservative taste in programming, a strict adherence to the printed score (often, his critics said, at the expense of artistic insights), a demanding and tempestuous demeanor, and an enormous ego. He was a match for the players in the Philharmonic, who had a reputation for being difficult and uncooperative. Toscanini's exit from the orchestra created a gap that wasn't entirely filled until the '60s. After Furtwangler declined the offer of the chief conductor's post for political reasons, and Otto Klemperer lost his chance at the position for reasons of personality and internal politics, Sir John Barbirolli succeeded Toscanini for seven years, through 1943. Barbirolli's tenure was a stormy one, owing to his difficulties in dealing with the often recalcitrant members of the orchestra, which marred the relationship between this legendary conductor and a great orchestra. His successor, Arthur Rodzinski was a good administrator, and widely recognized as a great "builder of orchestras," but not a great conductor, and he left after four years, in 1947, over personality conflicts with management.

Bruno Walter served in an interim capacity for two seasons as "Musical Advisor," shepherding the orchestra through the two years in which a successor to Rodzinski was chosen. Walter would have been the first choice as a permanent successor but for his being past 70 and not at all in sympathy with contemporary composers -- part of the Philharmonic's major mission since Damrosch's day had been presenting works by living composers, and Walter seldom conducted any music written after 1910.

Finally, Greek-born Dimitri Mitropoulos was chosen in 1949. Mitropoulos had done a great job of turning the Minneapolis Symphony into a major orchestra, and was popular with East Coast critics, in particular. His tenure in New York, however, proved an unhappy one, despite some great moments on record and in concert, marred by internal political struggles between the conductor and the board of directors, as well as the press and the orchestra.

His spare, severe spiritual demeanor (his definitive biography is entitled Priest of Music) made him seem very monkish, in a job that required the social skills of a diplomat. Additionally, although it was never spoken of at the time, Mitropoulos' homosexuality precluded his private life being delved into beyond the most cursory examination -- published profiles at the time describe a severe, priest-like self-denial, and otherwise presented Mitropoulos as a complete cypher off the podium. (His successor, Leonard Bernstein, was also homosexual -- he and Mitropoulos had even had an affair in the late '30s -- but had the cover of a marriage and family, and an outgoing, exuberant personality to protect him from any rumors, which would have been devastating in the social climate of the '50s).

The Philharmonic's situation in the '30s, '40s, and early '50s was further complicated by the continued presence in New York of Arturo Toscanini, in a very public musical role.

From the '20s until his retirement in 1954, Toscanini was the most well-known conductor in the world, and he automatically attracted audiences, press coverage, and critical raves wherever he was based. And after leaving the New York Philharmonic in 1936, he didn't leave New York -- rather, Toscanini became the conductor of the NBC Symphony Orchestra, an ensemble organized specifically for him. It was primarily a radio and recording orchestra (though it did make concert appearances on occasion), but the NBC Symphony was a de facto rival to the Philharmonic. Its radio broadcasts, heralded by both the NBC publicity operation, got greater exposure than that of the Philharmonic, especially among more casual listeners. Additionally, the NBC Symphony attracted many of the best musicians in New York, because its members were paid far more than those of the Philharmonic. And when television came along in the mid-'40s, the NBC Symphony's hand-in-glove relationship with the NBC network brought it to into the new medium almost immediately, and with massive exposure.

The Philharmonic had appeared on the radio since 1922, and its concerts were still important -- much repertory that was never formally recorded by the orchestra was presented during these broadcasts -- but never as visibly as those of the NBC Symphony. The situation with recording wasn't much different. The Philharmonic had an exclusive relationship with the Columbia Masterworks label since the '20s under Mengelberg, but with a few exceptions, its postwar records didn't sell as well as those by the Philadelphia Orchestra, the Chicago Symphony, or the Boston Symphony.

The advent of the long-playing record in 1948 helped all classical music sales, but the Philharmonic under Mitropoulos never sold as many records as Toscanini's NBC Symphony recordings on RCA Victor, despite the fact that the latter were notorious for their harsh, dry acoustic, or as many records as Eugene Ormandy and the Philadelphia Orchestra during the same period. It was only with Toscanini's retirement in 1954 that the Philharmonic lost this longtime rival for New York and national audiences.

The real turning point for the Philharmonic came in 1957 with the appointment of Leonard Bernstein as Music Director of the orchestra. Not yet 40 years old, and American born, and a composer as well as a conductor (something the Philharmonic had not had since Gustav Mahler) with a reputation for daring but not outrageous showmanship and ambitious programming, Bernstein added a degree of elegance and a flair for publicity that the orchestra had lacked since Toscanini's era.

His approach to music-making, though not universally praised, raised the orchestra to new prominence. His interpretations of the standard repertory were always exciting, if not always very deep or profound. Additionally, his arrival at the Philharmonic coincided with Columbia Records' switch to stereo recording. Thus, Bernstein was obliged -- and Columbia was more than happy to do the obliging -- to re-record the entire mainstream classical repertory from Beethoven to Wagner.

The results were spectacular, at least at first, on a commercial level. The Philharmonic's records began selling in ever larger quantities as a new generation of listeners and concertgoers were drawn to the charismatic Bernstein. Where Mitropoulos had been a highly mystical, spiritual figure at the podium, Bernstein's music-making at his most involved achieved an almost sexual ecstacy (although it was never defined as such during that more reserved era) that radiated through the playing and into the concert hall.

And then there was the concert hall.

The New York Philharmonic's performing home for decades had been Carnegie Hall. But in the late '50s, planning had begun for a huge new complex devoted to the performing arts on the West Side of Manhattan, called Lincoln Center. Opened in 1963, the complex included a splendid new performing home for the orchestra called Philharmonic (later Avery Fisher) Hall. Bernstein was the first of the orchestra's chief conductors to lead the orchestra from the new hall and, indeed, with the exception of Barbirolli, was the only one of its chief conductors from the pre-Lincoln Center era to live to see Lincoln Center opened.

Bernstein and the Philharmonic also became fixtures on national television, thanks to Columbia Records' relationship at the time to the CBS network (the two entities have had separate ownership since the end of the '80s) and to his flair for showmanship and his considerable skills as a teacher and musical emissary. Nowhere did these abilities serve him or the public better than in the Young Peoples' Concerts, which Bernstein wrote, hosted, and conducted from 1958 through 1969 in a series of 47 broadcasts. Intended for audiences ages seven through 17, these performances by the Philharmonic, first at Carnegie Hall and later at Lincoln Center, introduced millions of viewers of all ages to the world of classical music in a manner that was lively, informative, and distinctly unthreatening, covering everything from Bach to Bartok.

By the mid-'60s, Bernstein was the pre-eminent conductor in the United States and the best-known American conductor in the world, while the Philharmonic was the pride of the entire nation's musical community, which was growing by leaps and bounds. The orchestra's season was expanded, along with the number of concerts, and employment at the Philharmonic was, for the first time, a year-round responsibility, all accompanied by generous increases in the musicians' salaries. Additionally, under Bernstein's direction, the Philharmonic became celebrated for various repertory -- in particular, he brought to fruition the Mahler revival started by Walter and Mitropoulos, and received critical raves for his performances of the Haydn symphonies with the Philharmonic. The Philharmonic also became known as an important force in contemporary music, especially for its presentation of new works by American composers.

The 13 years of Bernstein's tenure was the high point of the orchestra's visibility and popularity. The only obvious negative event to transpire during this era was the end, in 1967, of the Philharmonic's radio broadcasts, which had started in 1922 (these resumed in 1975). In 1969, however, weary from his duties with the New York Philharmonic and feeling he could go no farther with them, and with virtually every major orchestra in the world eagerly beckoning, Bernstein announced his retirement as Music Director, effective with the end of the 1969-1970 season.

No departure since the exit of Toscanini in 1936 had left the orchestra or its audience at a greater loss. For many younger listeners, Leonard Bernstein was the New York Philharmonic, and for many listeners nobody would be able to fill his shoes.

His successor, Pierre Boulez, was a daring choice -- indeed, Boulez's selection showed how much the music world had changed since the days when Bernstein had been chosen back in 1956. In those days, Bernstein was considered a radical choice for his relative youth, his aspirations as a composer, and the fact that he was still learning much of the repertory that he would be expected to conduct on a regular basis.

Boulez, who succeeded Bernstein in 1970, was far better known as an avant-garde composer than as a conductor. He had relatively little familiarity with the standard orchestral repertory, and the concert-going public had relatively little familiarity with him, except as one of the those contemporary composers that critics were always raving about.

Boulez was able to grow into the role of a mainstream conductor, however, and ultimately came to excel at the podium. He also devoted a considerable amount of the orchestra's programming to new 20th century works from all over the globe. His concerts were very popular, selling out regularly, and his record sales, although not as spectacular as those of Bernstein in the early and mid-'60s (and even Bernstein's sales had begun slackening off before the end of the decade), were respectable.

But Boulez was as concerned with composing as he was with conducting, and the demands of the Philharmonic position left relatively little time for composition. His departure came with the end of the 1977-1978 season, and he was replaced by Zubin Mehta, a charismatic conductor who had previously been music director of the Los Angeles Philharmonic.

Mehta's tenure coincided with a downturn in the orchestra's fortunes. The sales for the Philharmonic's recordings plummeted at the end of the '70s, amid a period of increasing production costs, which ultimately led to the termination of the orchestra's longtime exclusive relationship with Columbia Masterworks. Additionally, other orchestras, most notably the Chicago Symphony Orchestra under Sir Georg Solti, began to challenge the Philharmonic's reputation as the best that America had to offer.

Part of the problem lay with the legacy that Mehta was competing with, not only Boulez and Bernstein, but Mitropoulos and Walter, all of whom were well-represented in the Columbia Records back catalog, often on very competitively priced, budget classical albums. He also had the misfortune to have begun recording with the Philharmonic in the late '70s, during a period when the market for mainstream repertory was completely saturated; and unlike Bernstein's arrival with the orchestra, which had coincided with the advent of stereo phonographs, there was no compelling new technical innovation to compel people to buy the new records. Adding to the problem was that Mehta's interpretations of the core Classical and Romantic repertories, from Haydn through Mahler, were simply never very popular, at least compared with those of his predecessors.

The New York Philharmonic did occasionally raise excitement, but more often than not, it was on those occasions when Bernstein -- who had been appointed Conductor Emeritus for life, returned to conduct a program or make a recording, such as parts of his new Mahler symphonic cycle for Deutsche Grammophon records. Those recordings reveal an orchestra that played splendidly. The dawn of the compact disc era saw a new wave of record sales, although the Philharmonic's older recordings under Bernstein and Walter often elicited greater interest than their new ones.

Beginning with the 1991-1992 season, German conductor Kurt Masur became the Music Director of the Philharmonic. The start of Masur's tenure with the orchestra coincided with the 150th anniversary of its founding, a year-long celebration that saw attendance rise and public and critical enthusiasm rise once again. New programming initiatives, including concerts scheduled earlier in the evening to meet the needs of younger executives, helped bring the orchestra's work to a wider audience. A recording contract with the Teldec label also led to several superb recordings, including brilliantly played renditions of the Dvorak Symphonies Nos. 8 and 9, although, as with most American orchestras in the '90s, the sales of the Philharmonic's new recordings pales in comparison to their older releases.

Additionally, Masur has earned the loyalty of the Philharmonic's musicians, not always an easy achievement amid the tensions that can exist in a modern orchestra (neither Barbirolli nor Mitropoulos ever had it), which is borne out in their performances and recordings. The orchestra, whose reputation was battered during the '80s, is now ranked among the finest in the world, and is increasingly compared favorably with the Berlin Philharmonic.

The New York Philharmonic heads toward its 160th year of its existence in somewhat better financial and artistic condition than many of its American rivals -- in an era of declining government subsidies for the arts, and the rapidly aging demographics of concertgoers, no classical music institution in America is ever in very good condition, but the Philharmonic's budget has been balanced for most of the '90s, its endowment fund is the largest of any orchestra in the country, and its concerts have an average attendance level of 94-percent of capacity, with over 300,000 tickets sold in a typical season. It maintains a very high reputation as an ensemble and a healthy level of audience and community involvement. It continues to strike a careful balance between newly commissioned works by contemporary composers and established parts of the repertory. ~ Bruce Eder, Rovi

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