Artur Rodzinski conducted orchestras across America throughout the opening decades of the twentieth century. Critics noted both his volatile, instinctive podium manner and his particular skill at shaping raw ensembles into disciplined, responsive groups.
Born in 1892 in Spalato, Croatia, to Polish parents, he first encountered music at age six and began piano lessons. His family soon relocated to Lemberg, Austria, where his father served as a general in the Austro-Hungarian army. Pressured by his father, Rodzinski enrolled in law at the University of Vienna while simultaneously pursuing musical studies; there he took conducting lessons with Franz Schalk and received further instruction from Emil von Sauer, Joseph Marx, and Franz Schreker. After military service in the Austro-Hungarian forces during World War I, he launched his professional career. His earliest post was choral conductor in Lwów; in 1920 he made his operatic debut leading Verdi’s Ernani. The next year he assumed leadership of both the Warsaw Philharmonic Orchestra and the National Opera, introducing several landmark Polish first performances, among them Strauss’s Rosenkavalier and Ravel’s L’heure espagnole.
During a visit to Poland, Leopold Stokowski attended Rodzinski’s performance of Wagner’s Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg and was sufficiently struck to invite him to Philadelphia as guest conductor. That engagement produced Rodzinski’s American debut in 1925 and an assistant-conductor post the following year; he simultaneously headed the opera and orchestral departments at the Curtis Institute of Music. In 1929 he resigned from the Philadelphia Orchestra and moved to Los Angeles, where he took charge of the Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestra in place of Georg Schnéevoigt. Four years later he became music director of the Cleveland Orchestra and raised it to international stature, adding opera to its schedule and championing newer scores by Stravinsky, Jerome Kern, and others. The high point of his Cleveland tenure arrived in 1935 with the United States premiere of Shostakovich’s Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District.
Arturo Toscanini, recognizing Rodzinski’s reputation, asked him in 1937 to form and prepare the NBC Symphony Orchestra that Toscanini would later lead. Rodzinski also appeared frequently with the New York Philharmonic as a favored guest. Appointed its music director in 1943, he clashed with manager Arthur Judson and was released in 1947. A single, stormy season with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra followed; again at odds with management, he was dismissed after eleven months, yet the public and press greeted his concerts with enthusiasm. Declining health curtailed his activities, though he continued to appear as a guest conductor and achieved notable success in opera. Rodzinski died in Boston in 1958 only days after leading a performance for the Chicago Lyric Opera. Throughout his career he supported women’s advancement in classical music and, during World War II, pressed for the hiring of female musicians in professional orchestras.
