Toronto Symphony Orchestra (Welsman)
Encyclopedia
The Toronto Symphony Orchestra (TSO) was a Canadian orchestra
based in Toronto
, Ontario
that was active during the first two decades of the 20th century under the leadership of conductor
and pianist
Frank Welsman
. It was the first professional orchestra that existed for any notable length in the city of Toronto. After 13 seasons of performance, the orchestra folded during World War I due to war related problems in 1918.
ist Bertha Drechsler Adamson served as the orchestra's concertmistress
.
In 1908 the TSO cut ties with the TCM and became an entirely professional orchestra that was governed by a board under the leadership of Toronto businessman H.C. Cox. At that time the orchestra was renamed the Toronto Symphony Orchestra. Welsman continued in his roles as conductor and artistic director and many of the conservatory's faculty members continued to play with the orchestra. Frank Blachford was appointed the new concertmaster and other professionals were hired at this time to raise the overall playing talent of the orchestra. Composer and cellist Leo Smith
joined the orchestra in 1910 after leaving the orchestra of the Royal Opera House
in London. He eventually became principal cellist of the ensemble and served as the author of the ensemble's program notes from 1910-1918. Some of the other notable musicians in the orchesta included Jack Arthur, Luigi Romanelli, and Harry Adaskin
.
TSO gave its first full season of professional concerts in 1908 at Massey Hall
. The orchestra concerts were popular events among Toronto's social elite. The TSO attempted to reach a different audience by establishing extra concerts of popular music in 1909 with ticket prices at just 25 cents.
During its history, the TSO mainly performed works from the standard German Classical
and Romantic
period repertoires, such as symphonies by Ludwig van Beethoven
, Joseph Haydn
, Felix Mendelssohn
, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
, and Franz Schubert
. In 1911 the ensemble gave a program entirely devoted to the works of Richard Wagner
. Strangely absent from the orchestra's repertoire were the works of Johannes Brahms
. The group also performed more rarely heard works such as both of Karl Goldmark
's symphonies and Richard Strauss
's Death and Transfiguration.
Outside of the German repertoire, the TSO performed such works as Antonín Dvořák
's Symphony No. 9
, several symphonic works by Vasily Kalinnikov
, and the final three symphonies by Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky
among others. In April 1911 the ensemble performed Edward Elgar
's oratorio
The Dream of Gerontius
with the composer as guest conductor and the Sheffield Choir. A survey taken of audience members in 1913 revealed that the group's most popularly received works were Tchaikovsky's Symphony No. 6
, Mendelssohn's A Midsummer Night's Dream, and Franz Liszt
's Hungarian Rhapsody No. 2
.
The TSO was host to many important musicians. Sergei Rachmaninoff
notably performed his own Piano Concerto No. 2
with the orchestra in 1914. Other notable guests included pianist
s Wilhelm Backhaus
and Vladimir de Pachmann
; singers Clara Butt
, Johanna Gadski
, Alma Gluck
, Louise Homer
, Leo Slezak
, and Ernestine Schumann-Heink
; and violin
ists Mischa Elman, Carl Flesch
, Fritz Kreisler
, and Eugène Ysaÿe
.
During World War I, the TSO began to experience financial difficulties and faced other war related problems effecting travel, audience attencence, and the ability to keep its players. Ultimately these problems compounded and the orchestra disbanded in 1918.
Orchestra
An orchestra is a sizable instrumental ensemble that contains sections of string, brass, woodwind, and percussion instruments. The term orchestra derives from the Greek ορχήστρα, the name for the area in front of an ancient Greek stage reserved for the Greek chorus...
based in Toronto
Toronto
Toronto is the provincial capital of Ontario and the largest city in Canada. It is located in Southern Ontario on the northwestern shore of Lake Ontario. A relatively modern city, Toronto's history dates back to the late-18th century, when its land was first purchased by the British monarchy from...
, Ontario
Ontario
Ontario is a province of Canada, located in east-central Canada. It is Canada's most populous province and second largest in total area. It is home to the nation's most populous city, Toronto, and the nation's capital, Ottawa....
that was active during the first two decades of the 20th century under the leadership of conductor
Conducting
Conducting is the art of directing a musical performance by way of visible gestures. The primary duties of the conductor are to unify performers, set the tempo, execute clear preparations and beats, and to listen critically and shape the sound of the ensemble...
and pianist
Pianist
A pianist is a musician who plays the piano. A professional pianist can perform solo pieces, play with an ensemble or orchestra, or accompany one or more singers, solo instrumentalists, or other performers.-Choice of genres:...
Frank Welsman
Frank Welsman
Frank Squire Welsman was a Canadian conductor, pianist, composer and music educator. He began his career as a concert pianist, but ultimately earned his place in Canadian history for establishing Toronto's first symphony orchestra of any standing, the Toronto Symphony Orchestra which was active...
. It was the first professional orchestra that existed for any notable length in the city of Toronto. After 13 seasons of performance, the orchestra folded during World War I due to war related problems in 1918.
History
The TSO was founded in 1906 under the name the Toronto Conservatory Symphony Orchestra by Frank Welsman. The orchestra was originally formed as a student ensemble for the Toronto Conservatory of Music (TCM), and during its first two years the orchestra was made up of only students and faculty from the school. Faculty member and violinViolin
The violin is a string instrument, usually with four strings tuned in perfect fifths. It is the smallest, highest-pitched member of the violin family of string instruments, which includes the viola and cello....
ist Bertha Drechsler Adamson served as the orchestra's concertmistress
Concertmaster
The concertmaster/mistress is the spalla or leader, of the first violin section of an orchestra. In the UK, the term commonly used is leader...
.
In 1908 the TSO cut ties with the TCM and became an entirely professional orchestra that was governed by a board under the leadership of Toronto businessman H.C. Cox. At that time the orchestra was renamed the Toronto Symphony Orchestra. Welsman continued in his roles as conductor and artistic director and many of the conservatory's faculty members continued to play with the orchestra. Frank Blachford was appointed the new concertmaster and other professionals were hired at this time to raise the overall playing talent of the orchestra. Composer and cellist Leo Smith
Leo Smith (composer)
Leo Joseph Leopold Smith was an English composer, writer, music critic, music educator, and cellist who was primarily active in Canada...
joined the orchestra in 1910 after leaving the orchestra of the Royal Opera House
Royal Opera House
The Royal Opera House is an opera house and major performing arts venue in Covent Garden, central London. The large building is often referred to as simply "Covent Garden", after a previous use of the site of the opera house's original construction in 1732. It is the home of The Royal Opera, The...
in London. He eventually became principal cellist of the ensemble and served as the author of the ensemble's program notes from 1910-1918. Some of the other notable musicians in the orchesta included Jack Arthur, Luigi Romanelli, and Harry Adaskin
Harry Adaskin
Harry Adaskin, was a Canadian violinist, academic, and radio broadcaster.-History:Born to a Jewish family in Riga, Latvia, he emigrated with his family to Toronto. At the age of twelve, he started at the Toronto Conservatory of Music, and at the age of 16 became a member of Frank Welsman's...
.
TSO gave its first full season of professional concerts in 1908 at Massey Hall
Massey Hall
Massey Hall is a venerable performing arts theatre in the Garden District of downtown Toronto. The theatre originally was designed to seat 3,500 patrons but, after extensive renovations in the 1940s, now seats up to 2,765....
. The orchestra concerts were popular events among Toronto's social elite. The TSO attempted to reach a different audience by establishing extra concerts of popular music in 1909 with ticket prices at just 25 cents.
During its history, the TSO mainly performed works from the standard German Classical
Classical period (music)
The dates of the Classical Period in Western music are generally accepted as being between about 1750 and 1830. However, the term classical music is used colloquially to describe a variety of Western musical styles from the ninth century to the present, and especially from the sixteenth or...
and Romantic
Romantic music
Romantic music or music in the Romantic Period is a musicological and artistic term referring to a particular period, theory, compositional practice, and canon in Western music history, from 1810 to 1900....
period repertoires, such as symphonies by Ludwig van Beethoven
Ludwig van Beethoven
Ludwig van Beethoven was a German composer and pianist. A crucial figure in the transition between the Classical and Romantic eras in Western art music, he remains one of the most famous and influential composers of all time.Born in Bonn, then the capital of the Electorate of Cologne and part of...
, Joseph Haydn
Joseph Haydn
Franz Joseph Haydn , known as Joseph Haydn , was an Austrian composer, one of the most prolific and prominent composers of the Classical period. He is often called the "Father of the Symphony" and "Father of the String Quartet" because of his important contributions to these forms...
, Felix Mendelssohn
Felix Mendelssohn
Jakob Ludwig Felix Mendelssohn Barthóldy , use the form 'Mendelssohn' and not 'Mendelssohn Bartholdy'. The Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians gives ' Felix Mendelssohn' as the entry, with 'Mendelssohn' used in the body text...
, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart , baptismal name Johannes Chrysostomus Wolfgangus Theophilus Mozart , was a prolific and influential composer of the Classical era. He composed over 600 works, many acknowledged as pinnacles of symphonic, concertante, chamber, piano, operatic, and choral music...
, and Franz Schubert
Franz Schubert
Franz Peter Schubert was an Austrian composer.Although he died at an early age, Schubert was tremendously prolific. He wrote some 600 Lieder, nine symphonies , liturgical music, operas, some incidental music, and a large body of chamber and solo piano music...
. In 1911 the ensemble gave a program entirely devoted to the works of Richard Wagner
Richard Wagner
Wilhelm Richard Wagner was a German composer, conductor, theatre director, philosopher, music theorist, poet, essayist and writer primarily known for his operas...
. Strangely absent from the orchestra's repertoire were the works of Johannes Brahms
Johannes Brahms
Johannes Brahms was a German composer and pianist, and one of the leading musicians of the Romantic period. Born in Hamburg, Brahms spent much of his professional life in Vienna, Austria, where he was a leader of the musical scene...
. The group also performed more rarely heard works such as both of Karl Goldmark
Karl Goldmark
Karl Goldmark, also known originally as Károly Goldmark and later sometimes as Carl Goldmark; May 18, 1830, Keszthely – January 2, 1915, Vienna) was a Hungarian composer.- Life and career :...
's symphonies and Richard Strauss
Richard Strauss
Richard Georg Strauss was a leading German composer of the late Romantic and early modern eras. He is known for his operas, which include Der Rosenkavalier and Salome; his Lieder, especially his Four Last Songs; and his tone poems and orchestral works, such as Death and Transfiguration, Till...
's Death and Transfiguration.
Outside of the German repertoire, the TSO performed such works as Antonín Dvořák
Antonín Dvorák
Antonín Leopold Dvořák was a Czech composer of late Romantic music, who employed the idioms of the folk music of Moravia and his native Bohemia. Dvořák’s own style is sometimes called "romantic-classicist synthesis". His works include symphonic, choral and chamber music, concerti, operas and many...
's Symphony No. 9
Symphony No. 9 (Dvorák)
The Symphony No. 9 in E Minor "From the New World", Op. 95, B. 178 , popularly known as the New World Symphony, was composed by Antonín Dvořák in 1893 during his visit to the United States from 1892 to 1895. It is by far his most popular symphony, and one of the most popular in the modern repertoire...
, several symphonic works by Vasily Kalinnikov
Vasily Kalinnikov
Vasily Sergeyevich Kalinnikov was a Russian composer of two symphonies, several additional orchestral works and numerous songs, all of them imbued with characteristics of folksong...
, and the final three symphonies by Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky
Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky
Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky (Russian: Пётр Ильи́ч Чайко́вский ; often "Peter Ilich Tchaikovsky" in English. His names are also transliterated "Piotr" or "Petr"; "Ilitsch", "Il'ich" or "Illyich"; and "Tschaikowski", "Tschaikowsky", "Chajkovskij"...
among others. In April 1911 the ensemble performed Edward Elgar
Edward Elgar
Sir Edward William Elgar, 1st Baronet OM, GCVO was an English composer, many of whose works have entered the British and international classical concert repertoire. Among his best-known compositions are orchestral works including the Enigma Variations, the Pomp and Circumstance Marches, concertos...
's oratorio
Oratorio
An oratorio is a large musical composition including an orchestra, a choir, and soloists. Like an opera, an oratorio includes the use of a choir, soloists, an ensemble, various distinguishable characters, and arias...
The Dream of Gerontius
The Dream of Gerontius
The Dream of Gerontius, popularly called just Gerontius, is a work for voices and orchestra in two parts composed by Edward Elgar in 1900, to text from the poem by John Henry Newman. It relates the journey of a pious man's soul from his deathbed to his judgment before God and settling into Purgatory...
with the composer as guest conductor and the Sheffield Choir. A survey taken of audience members in 1913 revealed that the group's most popularly received works were Tchaikovsky's Symphony No. 6
Symphony No. 6 (Tchaikovsky)
The Symphony No. 6 in B minor, Op. 74, Pathétique is Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky's final completed symphony, written between February and the end of August 1893. The composer led the first performance in Saint Petersburg on 16/28 October of that year, nine days before his death...
, Mendelssohn's A Midsummer Night's Dream, and Franz Liszt
Franz Liszt
Franz Liszt ; ), was a 19th-century Hungarian composer, pianist, conductor, and teacher.Liszt became renowned in Europe during the nineteenth century for his virtuosic skill as a pianist. He was said by his contemporaries to have been the most technically advanced pianist of his age...
's Hungarian Rhapsody No. 2
Hungarian Rhapsody No. 2
Hungarian Rhapsody No. 2, S.244/2, is the second in a set of 19 Hungarian Rhapsodies by composer Franz Liszt, and is by far the most famous of the set. Few other piano solos have achieved such widespread popularity, offering the pianist the opportunity to reveal exceptional skill as a virtuoso,...
.
The TSO was host to many important musicians. Sergei Rachmaninoff
Sergei Rachmaninoff
Sergei Vasilievich Rachmaninoff was a Russian composer, pianist, and conductor. Rachmaninoff is widely considered one of the finest pianists of his day and, as a composer, one of the last great representatives of Romanticism in Russian classical music...
notably performed his own Piano Concerto No. 2
Piano Concerto No. 2 (Rachmaninoff)
The Piano Concerto No. 2 in C minor, Op. 18, is a concerto for piano and orchestra composed by Sergei Rachmaninoff between the autumn of 1900 and April 1901. The second and third movements were first performed with the composer as soloist on 2 December 1900...
with the orchestra in 1914. Other notable guests included pianist
Pianist
A pianist is a musician who plays the piano. A professional pianist can perform solo pieces, play with an ensemble or orchestra, or accompany one or more singers, solo instrumentalists, or other performers.-Choice of genres:...
s Wilhelm Backhaus
Wilhelm Backhaus
Wilhelm Backhaus was a German pianist and pedagogue.Born in Leipzig, Backhaus studied at the conservatoire there with Alois Reckendorf until 1899, later taking private piano lessons with Eugen d'Albert in Frankfurt...
and Vladimir de Pachmann
Vladimir de Pachmann
Vladimir von Pachmann or Pachman was a pianist of Russian-German ethnicity, especially noted for performing the works of Chopin, and also for his eccentric on-stage style.-Biography:...
; singers Clara Butt
Clara Butt
Dame Clara Ellen Butt DBE , sometimes called Clara Butt-Rumford after her marriage, was an English contralto with a remarkably imposing voice and a surprisingly agile singing technique. Her main career was as a recitalist and concert singer.-Early life and career:Clara Butt was born in Southwick,...
, Johanna Gadski
Johanna Gadski
Johanna Gadski was a German soprano blessed with a secure, powerful, ringing voice, fine musicianship and an excellent technique. These attributes enabled her to enjoy a top-flight career in New York City and London, performing heavy dramatic roles in the German and Italian repertoires.-Life &...
, Alma Gluck
Alma Gluck
Alma Gluck was a Romanian-born American soprano, one of the world's most famous female singers at the peak of her career .-Life and career:...
, Louise Homer
Louise Homer
Louise Homer was an American operatic contralto who had an active international career in concert halls and opera houses from 1895 until her retirement in 1932. After a brief stint as a vaudeville entertainer in New England, she made her professional opera debut in France in 1898...
, Leo Slezak
Leo Slezak
Leo Slezak was a world-famous Moravian tenor. He was associated in particular with German opera as well as the title role in Verdi's Otello.- Beginnings :...
, and Ernestine Schumann-Heink
Ernestine Schumann-Heink
Ernestine Schumann-Heink was a celebrated Austrian, later American, operatic contralto, noted for the size, beauty, tonal richness, flexibility and wide range of her voice.- Early life:...
; and violin
Violin
The violin is a string instrument, usually with four strings tuned in perfect fifths. It is the smallest, highest-pitched member of the violin family of string instruments, which includes the viola and cello....
ists Mischa Elman, Carl Flesch
Carl Flesch
Carl Flesch was a violinist and teacher.Carl Flesch was born in Moson in Hungary in 1873. He began playing the violin at seven years of age. At 10, he was taken to Vienna, and began to study with Jakob Grün. At 17, he left for Paris, and joined the Paris Conservatoire...
, Fritz Kreisler
Fritz Kreisler
Friedrich "Fritz" Kreisler was an Austrian-born violinist and composer. One of the most famous violin masters of his or any other day, he was known for his sweet tone and expressive phrasing. Like many great violinists of his generation, he produced a characteristic sound which was immediately...
, and Eugène Ysaÿe
Eugène Ysaÿe
Eugène Ysaÿe was a Belgian violinist, composer and conductor born in Liège. He was regarded as "The King of the Violin", or, as Nathan Milstein put it, the "tzar"...
.
During World War I, the TSO began to experience financial difficulties and faced other war related problems effecting travel, audience attencence, and the ability to keep its players. Ultimately these problems compounded and the orchestra disbanded in 1918.