by Paul R. Spitzzeri
Reflective of the meteoric growth of Los Angeles in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, the development of so-called “serious music” was part of the growth of the metropolis with major transformations taking place in roughly a quarter century from the founding of the Los Angeles Symphony Orchestra in 1893 to the establishment of the Philharmonic Orchestra of Los Angeles in 1919.
Hand-in-hand with the rise of classical music in the Angel City, including the professionalization of its musicians and conductors, as well as the vital role played by impresario Lynden E. Behymer, was the ability to bring prominent soloists to perform with the orchestras, which, in turn, drew larger crowds and more media interest.
This latest “Striking a Chord” post highlights, from the Museum’s artifact collecton, the program for the Eleventh Symphony Concert of the recently launched Philharmonic, held on 9-10 April 1920, at the Trinity Auditorium. The orchestra was founded and completely financed by William Andrews Clark, Jr., son of a Montana copper magnate, and its first performance was the prior October at the venue, which hosted its concerts for that first season.
The elder Clark was one of a trio of “copper kings” in Butte and he expanded his business empire into utilities, banks, newspapers, real estate, agriculture, railroads and much more, while also serving as a United States Senator from Montana, though he first tried to buy the seat through bribery of the legislature before serving a single term. In the first years of the 20th century, he built the San Pedro, Los Angeles and Salt Lake Railroad, the line of which runs just south of the Homestead, and the Mary Andrews Clark Memorial Home for Working Women, which has been the subject of a post here.
The William Andrews Clark Memorial Library, affiliated with the University of California, Los Angeles and in the West Adams section of the city, was a monument to the father by the son, and built between 1924 and 1926 with the younger Clark’s 13,000 books and a $1.5 million endowment part of the enterprise.
Clark, Jr., who was also a major figure in the establishment of the Hollywood Bowl, was an amateur violinist who sometimes performed in that section of the orchestra and, when the decision was made to found the Phil, Behymer spoke for the philanthropist in an interview for the Los Angeles Express, published in its 11 June 1919 number:
W.A. Clark, jr. had a vision of a Philharmonic Symphony orchestra for Los Angeles that would rank with great world philharmonic bodies. Many of us have had a dream of the same thing. Mr. Clark, jr. has made the dream come true.
It was entirely the idea of Mr. Clark to found this orchestra. He went at it with a vision and inspiration that brought the support of many fine men and women whose names stand for much in the social and business circles [of the city].
The paper added that the news of the orchestra’s establishment was “one of the most important features of musical news in the United States” and was intended to articulate that “Los Angeles is at last on the map of great musical cities.” It was also reported that Clark presented $100,000, enough for “a season of concerts for six to seven months,” while any lack of funding was to be covered by subscriptions that were raised for such an exigency.
Composer and musician Henry Schoenefeld was named the director and Behymer the manager, while it was noted that “the players selected number the best instrumentalists to be found on the Pacific coast” and were not involved in “cabaret work, parades or the fatiguing engagements of five or six shows a day.”
It appears there was just one woman, harpist May Hogan, who was still in high school when she joined and remained for two decades before going on to film, television and recording work. Perhaps the best-known of the musicians was Ferde Grofe (listed as Ferd. Von Grofe in the program) who was the main arranger for the very popular bandleader Paul Whiteman, orchestrated the famous “Rhapsody in Blue” by George Gershwin when it premiered in 1924 and whose 1931 Grand Canyon Suite was widely known.
Rehearsals were slated to start in mid-September for a schedule of a dozen each of symphony and popular concerts through the end of April. There were also to be a dozen concerts for Los Angeles public schools and others at high schools in Hollywood, Long Beach and Pasadena as well as at Pomona College in Claremont, with these to be of an “educational character and placed before the students at a minimum cost. The Express added that “arrangements are being made for well-known soloists to appear at intervals during the season’s series,” while “many novelties are to be given.”
Clark approached the famed composer Sergei Rachmaninoff to be the Phil’s first conductor, but Rachmaninoff recently settled in New York City and declined the offer, so Walter Henry Rothwell, previously an assistant to another legendary composer, Gustav Mahler, was hired. The account observed that “the hearty cooperation of Leopold Godowsky and Serge [sic] Rachmaninoff has been secured in connection with the program arrangements.” The piece concluded with,
The object is to make this organization useful, mobile, and to fulfill a mission that will reach all music lovers throughout Southern California.
For the first season, before a move to the Temple Baptist Church Auditorium, known for a time as Clune’s Auditorium because its proprietor was movie theater owner William H. Clune, and which became the Philharmonic Auditorium—it remained there until 1964 when the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion at the Music Center opened and, since 2003, it has performed at the Walt Disney Concert Hall.
The Trinity Methodist Episcopal Church (South) announced in November 1911 ambitious plans for an auditorium and men’s home or hotel at the northwest corner of Grand Avenue and 9th Street and not quite a year later it was stated that, with the existing church and parsonage to be leveled, the congregation was to conduct services at the Jewish B’nai B’rith Temple while the structure was under construction.
Work on the nines-story Beaux Arts-style edifice, designed by Harry C. Deckbar, Thornton Fitzhugh and Frank G. Krucker with the final cost pegged at around $1 million, was finally completed in fall 1914, with a 19 July feature in the Los Angeles Tribune celebrating the impending opening so that Behymer could stage serious music concerts, after having left the Temple Auditorium when Clune acquired it for movie showings and, before that, having to vacate the Simpson Tabernacle auditorium.
While the seating capacity of about 2,300 was smaller than the Temple, the Trinity offered an ivory and gold decorative palette and olive-green velvet drapes “which will make it one of the most beautiful auditoriums in the city.” With 22-inch wide seats and three feet between rows (there was the main floor, as well as a balcony and gallery) and plush carpeting with a rubber base, comfort for the first and sound muffling with the latter were emphasized. Also mentioned were “retiring rooms” with maid and valet service as well as a music hall seating about 400 for club and private concerts and three halls for events and meetings.
The Trinity opened on 20 September for a dedication and religious services, with a concert the following day with a recital by house organist Arthur Blakeley, with the instrument the largest pipe organ in western America, though it was two-thirds unfinished, and a trio of vocal soloists. Behymer continued offering concerts there until the formation of the Phil and then through that first season. The edifice still stands, though has largely been vacant for some time.
Returning to Leopold Godowsky (1870-1938), the renowned pianist, widely heralded for his technical skills, though some found his playing to be too clinical and cold, as well as “Godowsky method” of performance, he was the featured soloist for the 9-10 April shows in the featured program. He was born in Vilnius, Lithuania, then part of the Russian Empire, and was a true child prodigy, confessing to have had very few formal lessons and playing piano and violin, while composing, by age five and was performing publicly at nine.
At age 14, he studied briefly in Berlin, but left and continued his concertizing, including his first American appearances in 1886, while four years later, he was one of the first pianists to give a recital at Carnegie Hall in New York City. In 1891, he married Frieda Saxe, with whom he had two daughters and two sons, and, the next year, became an American citizen while he secured a position as a head piano teacher at a Philadelphia conservatory.
He moved to Chicago in 1894 to lead the piano department at a conservatory and, as the 19th century closed, relocated to Berlin. This was followed by a move to Vienna, though the outbreak of the First World War led him to move with his family to New York City. Over the years, his method, gaining in currency among pianists, included the idea of “weight release” rather than muscle use, as a key to successful performance. He was also renowned for his transcriptions, or alternate arrangements, of other composers’ pieces.
Godowsky’s first concerts in Los Angeles came at the dawn of the 20th century with two performances in early February 1901 at the Simpson Auditorium, and he returned several times in successive years. His shows were always well-attended and reviewed very positively, with the Tribune‘s Gilbert Brown gushing, in the 10 November 1916 edition, that the maestro “turned loose the full flood of his genius last night at the Trinity Auditorium and played a piano program of unbelievable brilliancy.”
In summer 1918, Godowsky and his family were in the Los Angeles area, including a stint enjoying the scenery and weather at the Mount Wilson Hotel, as well as the fact that “many social affairs have been given in their honor which have gathered together the most prominent musicians” in the region. The maestro and his daughter, Dagmar, visited the film studio of star Sessue Hayakawa, who was struck, as was director William Worthington, with her appearance and manner and offered her a contract.
This almost certainly, along with the prospect of Godowsky working in the growing music world of the Angel City, led to the family settling in a house just off Wilshire Boulevard, where they remained for a couple of years. When the concerts approached, the Los Angeles Express of 7 April 1920 reported that,
Leopold Godowsky, the brilliant pianist who is to be soloist with the Philharmonic orchestra . . . comes direct from New York, where he has been spending a portion of the winter, dividing his time between concertizing and superintending the publication of many of his new compositions, which will be released this spring.
He has chosen the Chopin “F Minor Concerto” to play with the Philharmonic, the same number which he used with the New Symphony of New York last week with such splendid success.
The interpretation of Chopin has always been one of Godowsky’s principle [sic] fortes, and his reading of this particular concerto is probably his finest piece of work.
After the first performance, Los Angeles Times critic Edwin Schallert (whose actor son, William, might be remembered by people of a certain age as “the Admiral” in the 1960s spy spoof television comedy, Get Smart) reviewed the concert. Schallert wrote that Godowsky’s “rendition represented a perfect blending of the superpianistic ability of the soloist, and the finesse which Walter Rothwell has displayed, ever since he took up the baton here.”
The opening piece was the eighth symphony by Beethoven, adjudged by the critic to be “a test for any orchestra” and that the Philharmonic’s version was “perhaps inclined to heaviness,” while Rothwell was credited for his “scholarly understanding” and attempt to “heighten the many nuances of light and shade that are part of the composition.” What was lacking, Schallert felt, was a lack of “a polishing of the surface of tone.” Carl Goldmark’s overture, Sakuntala, was deemed “a pleasing close to the programme.”
The Los Angeles Record, also of the 10th, offered a review by a critic known only as “K,” lauded the concert by “a truly impressive symphony orchestra and the foremost living technician of the keyboard, our townsman, Leopold Godowsky.” The maestro, said to be “quiet, modest, composed and competent as of old,” was strangely praised in that “he plays the piano as easily as the rest of us play the phonograph.”
During the Chopin concerto’s fourth movement, the pianist displayed “that ease and facile technique which enables him to keep the most rapid and complicated fingering absolutely even and clear.” While it was added that the concert program did not demand “the profound insight which he has into music’s meaning and method,” the performance emphasized “the precision, grace, proportion and steadiness which fuse to make Godowsky the most assured and unfailing conqueror of the keys.”
As for the orchestra, “K” praised it by noting that “it is hard to believe that these musicians have not yet completed their first season together under Conductor Rothwell’s baton” as the performance “was excellent, and their gradations of tone and volume were truly effective.” It was opined that it was their best showing and that Rothwell “exhibited a certainty and a control which kept soloist and orchestra in complete accord.”
In spring 1920, a girl not quite thirteen was a devoted student of the piano and one wonders if Agnes Temple, daughter of Homestead owners Walter P. Temple and Laura González, who was a music teacher before her marriage, was aware of Godowsky’s work, including in phonograph recordings, or even attended one of these performances with her parents. Another Homestead-related tie was that among the Phil’s founding patrons were Boyle Workman, president of the Los Angeles City Council and grand-nephew of Homestead founders William Workman and Nicolasa Urioste, and his wife, Frances Widney.
The maestro and his family were recorded in the 1920 census at the start of the year (2 January, specifically) at their Los Angeles house, but he soon relocated to Seattle and then back to New York City, continuing to record and concertize. After the Great Depression hit, his finances suffered and then a stroke hit just after he finished a June 1930 recording session and he was partially paralyzed.
Already deeply depressed by this, Godowsky endured the suicide of a son and the death of his wife before succumbing to stomach cancer in 1938. Notably, son Leopold, Jr., also a talented musician who was first violinist and soloist with the symphony orchestras in Los Angeles and San Francisco who also studied chemistry and physics at UCLA, worked with a friend and partner on a color film process they perfected when hired by Eastman Kodak and which became the famous Kodachrome.
There are other objects in the Museum’s collection related to symphony orchestras, including concert programs, so we’ll look to feature more of these in the “Striking a Chord” series.