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appreciation the orchestra world

interesting oso recording…

Jacques Singer conducting the Oregon Symphony

I just got my hands on a copy of an over-the-air recording of the Oregon Symphony giving its inaugural performance in the newly renovated Civic Auditorium.  The year: 1968.  I was born that year.  Jacques Singer was the music director.  The portion of the program I’m in possession of starts with the Stowkowski version of the Toccata and Fugue in D minor by JS Bach, and concludes with the Beethoven Violin Concerto with Toshiya Eto, soloist.

I’m checking to see about the legality of posting a couple short excerpts, stay tuned!

Illustration of the proposed renovated Civic Auditorium

5 replies on “interesting oso recording…”

A ramble or a rant?

The picture of Jacques Singer brought this on.

At the end of the 1962-63 season, Rafael Spiro, one of the most respected musicians in the orchestra and this writer, one of the least known musicians in the orchestra both resigned from the Portland Symphony Orchestra. My first concert playing in the orchestra in 1958 included Dvorak’s “New World Symphony”, then known as his fifth, conducted by Theodore Bloomfield at the Civic Auditorium. My last concert with the orchestra was conducted by Jacques Singer at the Oriental Theater (East end of the Morrison Bridge) in ’63 while the Civic Auditorium was being reconstructed.

While the audiences and (for a while anyway) the Symphony Board fawned over Maestro Singer, the musicians grumbled and mumbled about how maybe he experienced Shell-Shock (translation: PTSD) from his WWII experience. I remember him stamping his foot and screaming “dimmyendo! dimmyendo! “ (diminuendo, we surmised). Once he returned from a rehearsal break with wet hair hanging down his forehead, a towel around his neck, and his fly at half-mast.

At that time, my day-job as a computer programmer was starting to show some promise for the future so I decided to drop the professional gig, but have continued to be an active amateur ever since.

I had a chance to play for Mr. Spiro when I was preparing the Mozart Sinfonie Concertante with one of his former students in the OSO, Julie Coleman. He was a wonderful gentleman of an era that sadly has passed by.

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