Leopold Stokowski

No matter how architecturally impressive a building may be, it's only walls and ceiling until animated by people who command - if not surpass - its potential. Though the sounds of many great artists massaged the Academy of Music's plaster in its first 50 years, the Old World structure waited until 1912 to take its place among the centers of New World culture with the arrival of its first resident titan, conductor Leopold Stokowski. The first great music director of the Philadelphia Orchestra, whose stormy reign lasted until 1941, Stokowski wasn't just the most glamorous of Philadelphia musicians, he was possibly the most artistically distinguished.

Judge Arlin Adams accepts the honors at the American Philosophical Society. The longtime lawyer and former federal judge received the Philadelphia Award for service to the community yesterday. Previous winners include Mayor Rendell, City Council President John F. Street, singer Marian Anderson and conductor Leopold Stokowski.

Philadelphia looms large in the U.S. Postal Service's latest stamps honoring great figures in American music. Among honorees are Eugene Ormandy and Leopold Stokowski, former music directors of the Philadelphia Orchestra, and Samuel Barber, the Philadelphia composer. Here, Wolfgang Sawallisch, the current music director, holds a framed copy of the stamps presented at the Academy of Music yesterday.

Edna Phillips made a bit of history when she was hired by Leopold Stokowski in 1930. As a harpist, she became the first woman to play in the Philadelphia Orchestra and the first female principal player in any American orchestra. After she resigned in 1946, she turned her energies to the Settlement Music School, which honored her yesterday with a concert at its South Philadelphia Branch.

Leopold Stokowski, the white-maned, flamboyant orchestra conductor who is credited with extending the range of music played by symphonies - and who built the Philadelphia Orchestra into today's magnificent instrument - is remembered tonight at 9 on Wayne Conner's "Collector's Corner" (WHYY (FM/ 91). English-born, despite his Polish name, Stokowski worked with engineers to improve the quality of recorded sound. We hear the results as Connor features "Leopold Stokowski and The Philadelphia Orchestra, 1929-30.

RE SUZANNE Muldowney's letter, "Too much Elvis!": Groucho Marx's claim to being famous was slapstick comedy and a quiz show with a rubber duck with a cigar in its mouth. On Zero Mostel, I have serious doubts how many Americans could name two movies he ever appeared in. Maria Callas and Leopold Stokowski speak for themselves. Bing Crosby: Nice man, great golf tournament, "White Christmas" (great holiday song), end of story. Elvis Presley, American icon, served his country, was a person whose generosity was only outdone by his millions of records, many of which were gold.

In a bold return to previous eras of youthful leadership, the Philadelphia Orchestra has chosen to be led by an emerging - though much sought-after - conductor. Yannick Nézet-Séguin, a 35-year-old Canadian whose starry orchestra and opera career is much in the ascent of late, is set to become Philadelphia's eighth music director in 2012. At that time, chief conductor Charles Dutoit will take the title of conductor laureate. The orchestra's board was expected to approve the appointment Monday.

In the 1960s, Richard Yardumian was a widely performed Philadelphia composer, but the almost inevitable 20 years of oblivion that follows the death of composers has obscured his work. To correct that, the Concerto Soloists Chamber Orchestra will play an all- Yardumian program at 2:30 p.m. Sunday - what would have been the composer's 75th birthday - at Holy Trinity Church. The event will be a benefit for the orchestra and for the Armenian General Benevolent Union. A Philadelphia native of Armenian descent, Yardumian began to compose as a teenager, blending Armenian folk songs and classical music he heard at home.

I, too, am excited about the prospect of Yannick Nézet-Séguin's taking over the podium of the Philadelphia Orchestra, but I am distressed that the conductor who put our orchestra on the map - Leopold Stokowski - is so rarely mentioned. When "Stoki" took over the podium in 1912 (at age 30), Philadelphia's orchestra was a stuffy, little-respected organization. He reorganized and energized it and built it into what Rachmaninoff in 1929 called "the finest orchestra the world has ever heard.

This summer's Philadelphia Orchestra celebration of Leopold Stokowski unofficially started early with the guest-conducting debut of the San Francisco Opera's Nicola Luisotti on Thursday night. In true Stoky style, the baton disappeared and his fingers conjured plush orchestral colors in Rimsky-Korsakov's Scheherazade   and Bach transcribed for orchestra, both of which were Stokowski calling cards during his years as music director (1912-1941). The question is: How relevant are such performances in the 21st century?

I, too, am excited about the prospect of Yannick Nézet-Séguin's taking over the podium of the Philadelphia Orchestra, but I am distressed that the conductor who put our orchestra on the map - Leopold Stokowski - is so rarely mentioned. When "Stoki" took over the podium in 1912 (at age 30), Philadelphia's orchestra was a stuffy, little-respected organization. He reorganized and energized it and built it into what Rachmaninoff in 1929 called "the finest orchestra the world has ever heard.

In a bold return to previous eras of youthful leadership, the Philadelphia Orchestra has chosen to be led by an emerging - though much sought-after - conductor. Yannick Nézet-Séguin, a 35-year-old Canadian whose starry orchestra and opera career is much in the ascent of late, is set to become Philadelphia's eighth music director in 2012. At that time, chief conductor Charles Dutoit will take the title of conductor laureate. The orchestra's board was expected to approve the appointment Monday.

Mary Tripician Watson had what a son calls "the odd distinction" of twice refusing symphony offers from Leopold Stokowski. First she couldn't become a double bassist for the Houston Symphony Orchestra, where Stokowski was conductor from 1955 to 1960. "My father was in the Seventh Army Symphony, and they had to go to [West] Germany," William E. Watson IV said. When she and her husband, William E. Watson III, returned to the States in 1962, Stokowski asked her to join the American Symphony that year when he had founded the New York City group.

Of all the great American orchestra builders of the mid-20th century, Eugene Ormandy most confounds rational reappraisal. That's partly because his vast discography generally has been marginalized in less-visible budget-line CD releases, and partly because the man whose Philadelphia Orchestra association spanned more than 44 years wasn't often heard in Europe. So while secondary conductors enjoy posthumous reputations thanks to live performances in German radio archives, Ormandy isn't much in evidence.

Every so often, Wagnerites have their day at the Philadelphia Orchestra. The glorious impracticalities that make Wagner an object of cultlike admiration mean that the years when Leopold Stokowski celebrated Easter with concert performances of Parsifal will never come again. But at least there are evenings such as Thursday's synthesis of Wagner's five-hour G?tterdammerung, when the orchestra, augmented by extra harpists and brass players, gives those acoustical resonating chambers in Verizon Hall the workout they deserve.

Having just rehabilitated Schumann's unfairly neglected Paradise and the Peri, the Philadelphia Orchestra performed a service at least as important yesterday with its first local performance of Edgard Var?se's orchestral monstrosity, Am?riques, since the 1926 premiere here under Leopold Stokowski. The Kimmel Center audience was, to put it politely, rather less charmed than at last week's Schumann. But if Var?se's revolutionary orchestral fervor doesn't inspire some level of audience resistance, the piece has been too quiet - which it wasn't at yesterday's exhilarating, convincing performance.

RE SUZANNE Muldowney's letter, "Too much Elvis!": Groucho Marx's claim to being famous was slapstick comedy and a quiz show with a rubber duck with a cigar in its mouth. On Zero Mostel, I have serious doubts how many Americans could name two movies he ever appeared in. Maria Callas and Leopold Stokowski speak for themselves. Bing Crosby: Nice man, great golf tournament, "White Christmas" (great holiday song), end of story. Elvis Presley, American icon, served his country, was a person whose generosity was only outdone by his millions of records, many of which were gold.

John H. Minsker, 95, an English hornist/oboist who was the last link with the Philadelphia Orchestra's contentious five years when it was ruled by two masters - Leopold Stokowski and Eugene Ormandy - died of heart failure last Sunday at home in Wynnewood. When he wasn't playing the English horn, Mr. Minsker played baseball and climbed mountains well into his 80s. Mr. Minsker became the English horn soloist for the Philadelphia Orchestra in 1936 at the age of 24. It was a time when Stokowski had reigned supreme since 1912 and was credited with making Philadelphia a musical capital.

The twin deities dominating the room from their frames on the piano are conductor Leopold Stokowski and oboist Marcel Tabuteau, both legends in their worlds that English hornist/oboist John Minsker lives, at age 95, to tell about. Memories of his 23-year history with the Philadelphia Orchestra from 1936 to 1959 threatened to flicker during recent hospitalizations for a heart attack and dizzy spells. And so, back in his classically sumptuous home in Wynnewood, he campaigned to talk to someone who can keep his firsthand observations of a crucial time in the orchestra's history from dying with him. Positioned on the sofa, he installs his hearing aid and borrows his son's glasses to read from a list of matters he doesn't want to forget - chief among them why the great Stokowski left Philadelphia in bitterness.