Russian Symphony Orchestra Society
The Russian Symphony Orchestra Society was founded in in New York City by Modest Altschuler, and functioned for fifteen years.
Oscar Levant described the orchestra as having constituted "a school for concertmasters"; among its members were Frederic Fradkin, Maximilian Pilzer, Ilya Skolnik, and Louis Edlin. Nikolai Sokoloff was the Russian Symphony Orchestra's concertmaster for a period before he became the first conductor of the Cleveland Orchestra in 1918. Film music conductors Nathaniel Shilkret and Nat Finston were also Russian Symphony Orchestra alumni, as was trumpeter Harry Glantz. The orchestra also formed the backbone of the New Music Society of America, founded in December 1905.
They performed the New York premieres of numerous pieces by Sergei Rachmaninoff, Igor Stravinsky and Alexander Scriabin, including Stravinsky's first symphony and The Firebird.
History
The early years
The orchestra's debut public performance was at Cooper Union Hall on January 7, 1904, and, according to Leonard Slatkin, featured works by Mikhail Glinka, Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky, Henryk Wieniawski, and the American premiere of Rachmaninoff's The Rock. However, the New York Times of January 3, 1904 lists the program as consisting of the Overture from Glinka's Ruslan and Lyudmila, a baritone aria from Borodin's Prince Igor, an intermezzo from Mikhail Ippolitov-Ivanov, a Russian dance by Eduard Nápravník and the symphonic suite Scheherazade by Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov; The Times of January 24 that same year mentions their second concert as including Wieniawski's Souvenir de Moscou and reviewing a later concert in the series mentions a performance of "'The Cliff' by Rachmaninoff," presumably the same piece as The Rock.For the 1904-1905 season, the orchestra, now expanded to 85 musicians, performed six concerts at Carnegie Hall, featuring works by a broad range of Russian composers, including a violin concerto by Julius Conus. The Times summarized the season as "resplendent with novelties," and praised their "enthusiasm" and the "absorbing interest" of their selected material, but was critical of the technical quality of their performances, particularly in comparison with their initial series of concerts at Cooper Union. That season, they were the first to use a celesta in concert performance in the United States. Among many Russian pieces given their American premieres that season was Rimsky-Korsakov's The Tale of Tsar Saltan; the fourth concert of the season consisted entirely of works that had never before been presented in New York: Vasily Kalinnikov's first symphony, Anton Arensky's suite "Silhouettes", and excerpts from Modest Mussorgsky's opera Khovanshchina.
The next year, their six Saturday night concerts at Carnegie Hall were supplemented by three "popular price" concerts there on Sunday afternoons. The orchestra formed a relationship with Vasily Safonov. Rachmaninoff was engaged as a guest conductor and piano soloist for concerts of his music performed on April 7-8, 1906, and Safonov's former pupil, pianist Joseph Lhévinne, was brought over to make his American debut; both were in their early thirties at the time, as was composer Vasily Zolotarev, whose Rhapsodie Hébraïque was also performed that season at Safonov's suggestion. Rhapsodie hébraïque, presented on the last two days of 1905, was based on secular Jewish melodies that the Times characterized as "the musical equivalent of Yiddish." Pianist Raoul Pugno also participated in the season as a soloist, playing Rachmaninoff's second piano concerto. Now expanded to 90 musicians, the orchestra was becoming an increasingly professional affair with, as the Times put it, "soloists of the first rank."
Another of those soloists was Giuseppe Campanari, a baritone associated with the Metropolitan Opera. The chaos of the Revolution of 1905 prevented sending scores from Russia for the orchestra to accompany Campanari on arias from Tchaikovsky's Iolanta and Queen of Spades, and the performances were almost canceled. The only known copy of even the texts of the arias that could readily be found in New York was a German translation. The situation was finally rescued by "a little music store on Canal Street" which had held the relevant scores in stock, unsold for about a decade after they had been purchased from a Russian tenor in need of cash.
Pianist Josef Lhévinne likewise had an extremely difficult time escaping the turmoil of revolution in Moscow to come to New York to play with the Russian Symphony and others, facing danger from both the revolutionists and the government. Although his troubles were compounded by an injury to a finger, his January 27, 1906 performance featured Anton Rubinstein's Fifth Concerto, and drew a very favorably review from the Times.
In late December 1905, Altschuler and others announced the formation of the New Music Society of America, soliciting "serious new work" from American composers, with the Russian Symphony functioning as the group's orchestra. A first Carnegie Hall concert originally scheduled for February 19 apparently never occurred, because the New York Times refers to a March 10 concert as the group's first; another concert took place April 2, 1906. The most prominent pieces at that first concert Edward MacDowell's Indian Suite and Second Concerto ; the orchestra also performed Henry F. Gilbert's Salammbô's Invocation to Tänith and Arthur Shepherd's Overture Joyeuse. The second concert featured violinist Maud Powell as a soloist; works included George Whitefield Chadwick's Melpomene overture, the premiere of a violin concerto by Henry Holden Huss, and premieres of pieces by David Stanley Smith and Frederick Converse.
That season, the March 17, 1906 concert featured the first American performance of the young Reinhold Glière's Symphony No 1 in E-flat major, Op. 8 as well as American premieres of pieces by César Cui a Cossack dance by Alexander Serov, who had died 35 years earlier in an era when Russian music had little currency in America, and 'a new concerto for violin, by Mlinarski," presumably the Concerto in D minor by the Polish composer Emil Młynarski. However, the unrest in Russia at that time prevented Rachmaninoff from visiting America, scuttling his planned April 7 performance. Instead, violinist and composer Émile Sauret was featured, performing Antonín Dvořák's Violin Concerto in A Minor. The same concert included two pieces by composer Anton Arensky, who had died on February 25.
An established orchestra
By the end of the 1906 season, the Russian Symphony Orchestra was an established part of the New York music scene. In all, the New York Times counted six New York premieres by the Russian Symphony Orchestra as such in 1906, and three more by the New Music Society. On May 25, the Society announced that Altschuler would be retained as Director for three more years, with Russian Ambassador Baron Roman Rosen continuing as honorary president. Looking forward to the 1906-1907 musical season, the Times counted them among the city's major orchestras, along with the New York Philharmonic, New York Symphony Orchestra, Peoples' Symphony Concerts, and Sam Franko's American Symphony.The 1906-7 season saw an appearance by pianist and composer Alexander Scriabin under the direction of his conservatory teacher Vasily Safonov. An anonymous New York Times review praised Scriabin's playing, while finding him immature as a composer. The same reviewer panned Alexander Glazunov's Third Symphony, which had its American premiere on this occasion: "hat Russian music the conductor's of the more cosmopolitan orchestras have left for the Russians to put down on their programmes as given 'for the first time' may have been rejected rather than overlooked." Apparently undaunted by that criticism, the orchestra announced two days later that its concert of January 17 would feature American premieres of Rachmaninoff's Spring cantata and Jean Sibelius's Karelia overture, though apparently Rimsky-Korsakov's Antar was substituted for the Rachmininoff. The Times doubled down in its criticism: "any of the things by the Russian composers that we do not know seem upon presentation hardly worth knowing.... Antar... is no symphony by any recognized definition of the term... This would be nothing against the music if it could win acceptance for itself as music, which it did not last evening." While continuing its skepticism toward recent Russian music, the Times had high praise for soloist Fannie Bloomfield Zeisler's February 7, 1907 performance of Anton Rubinstein's already well-known D Minor Concerto, though suggesting that the orchestra "show a lack of rehearsal with the pianist." The fifth of six concerts that season on February 28, featuring a return by pianist Josef Lhévinne, consisted entirely of Russian pieces performed for the first time in America, although they were not recent works. The orchestral introduction of Mussorgsky's The Fair at Sorochyntsi and Rubinstein's Caprice Russe were both by composers who had died before the turn of the century. Mikhail Ippolitov-Ivanov's Iveria Suite and Alexander Scriabin's First Symphony, while also not particularly recent, were at least by then-living composers, and Scriabin was present for the occasion.
That summer, Altschuler traveled to Europe to engage soloists for the 1907–1908 season, which began with a special concert November 10 at their largest venue to date: accompanying violinist Jan Kubelik at the New York Hippodrome. Four days later they began their regular season at Carnegie Hall with Russian ambassador Baron Rosen in attendance, and with a program consisting largely of American premieres of Russian pieces: Alexander Glazunov's Symphony No. 8, composed roughly two years earlier; arrangements of Russian folk songs by Glazunov, Anatoly Lyadov, and Rimsky-Korsakov; and Mussorgsky's "Great Gate of Kiev". The program also featured the American debut of young Russian violinist Lea Luboshutz, who received eight curtain calls for her solo on Tchaikovsky's Violin Concerto. She was not the only notable female soloist to play with the orchestra that season: on February 13, 1908, cellist May Muklé performed Karl Davydov's Cello Concerto No. 2 in A minor.