Fiedler was also associated with the
San Francisco Pops Orchestra
for 26 summers (beginning in 1949).
photographer unknown
He was born in
Boston,
Massachusetts, on December 17, 1894. His father was an
Austrian violinist who played in the
Boston Symphony Orchestra, and his mother was a pianist. When his father retired in 1910 they moved to
Vienna,
Austria. The family soon moved again, to
Berlin, where from 1911 to 1915 young Fiedler studied violin at the
Royal Academy of Music (
Hochschule für Musik Berlin) under
Willy Hess. He returned to Boston at the beginning of
World War I. In 1915 he joined the Boston Symphony Orchestra under
Karl Muck as a violinist. He also worked as a pianist, organist, and percussionist.
In 1924 he formed the Boston Sinfonietta, a chamber orchestra, made up of Boston Symphony Orchestra members, of which he was the conductor; its aim was to bring greater variety to the music heard both in
Boston and throughout the surrounding areas. This group was also known on records as the Arthur Fiedler Sinfonietta. In an effort to bring as much music to the public as possible, Fiedler initiated a campaign for a series of free outdoor concerts in
Boston and his efforts were rewarded in 1929 with the first
Esplanade Concerts on the
Charles River. These concerts programmed American and European light music and featured musicians from the Boston Symphony Orchestra: they were so successful that Fiedler was appointed the eighteenth conductor of the Boston Pops in 1930.
Fiedler was one of the most successful recording artists of the twentieth century, with his recordings for
RCA selling in excess of fifty million copies. He made his first recordings with the Boston Pops Orchestra in 1935, and together they continued to turn out best-selling records until his death: their account of the
Jacob Gade song,
Jealousy, was the first recording by a symphony orchestra to sell over one million copies.
Many albums were made for RCA as part of the company’s Living Stereo series, and their excellent technical qualities, combined with Fiedler’s unique style in this repertoire, have ensured that many of these recordings have remained in the catalogue. Fiedler’s discography (
link below) with the Boston Pops is so vast and so stylish that it is difficult to highlight specific recordings above others. Nonetheless among the best are the coupling of
Gaîté Parisienne by
Offenbach with
La Boutique Fantasque by
Rossini;
Classics for Children, which includes
Petr and the Wolf by
Prokofiev, and
The Carnival of the Animals by
Saint-Saëns;
Fiedler on the Roof, a compilation of hits from several of the most successful major Broadway musicals; and Boston Tea Party which includes shorter pieces by composers as varied as
Balfe,
Nicolai and
Vaughan Williams. A good example of Fiedler’s way with popular tunes may be heard in the album
Peace, Love and Pops, a collection of some of the most popular songs of the 1960s and 1970s.
The musicians in the Pops Orchestra didn’t so much speak to Fiedler as bicker, according to his daughter
Johanna, in her 1994 tell-all
Arthur Fiedler, Papa, the Pops and Me (
link below). Although the conductor who made the Boston Pops world famous seemed a
cheery, red-cheeked Santa Claus in his last years before the public,
here he behaves nastily to his family, to his underlings in the
orchestra and to unsuspecting fans who get in his way. According to his
daughter, he was a womanizing husband, a neglectful parent and a
self-deceiving alcoholic.
She described the musicians, members of the Boston Symphony Orchestra, as openly contemptuous of her father. They despised the light music he loved. They were incensed they had to sing “Yeah, yeah, yeah” when he programmed the Beatles song,
I Want To Hold Your Hand. His signature piece,
Stars and Stripes Forever, was one of their least favorites. Sometimes the musicians would toss their music in the air at the end of a piece they didn’t like. Fiedler would respond by tossing his score higher. The musicians would retaliate and the stage would be littered with sheet music. Fiedler hated what he viewed as the musicians’ elitism. “This damned snobbism is the thing I’ve been trying to fight all my life, every chance I get,” he once said.
He was associated with the
San Francisco Pops Orchestra
(
1812 link below) for 26 summers (beginning in 1949), and conducted many other
orchestras throughout the world. He was a featured conductor on several
of NBC's
The Standard Hour programs in 1950 and 1951, conducting the San Francisco Symphony in the
War Memorial Opera House; the performances were preserved on transcription discs and later released on audio cassette.
I remember going to the
Civic Center Auditorium (now called the Bill Graham Civic Auditorium) on Grove Street in
San Francisco in the late fifties and early sixties to hear his "Pop" concerts (
link below).
Among his many interests (which included coast guarding), Fiedler was a
keen observer of fires, and on the occasion of his seventy-fifth
birthday his son Peter presented him with a surprise gift on behalf of
his whole family: a full-size fire engine! He was witness to the devastating
Cocoanut Grove fire in Boston in 1942 (
link below).
Arthur Fiedler died on July 10, 1979 after having been in failing health for
some time. During the previous winter, he suffered a stroke that
temporarily left him unable to speak, but he quickly recovered and in
May conducted a concert to celebrate his 50th anniversary as conductor
of the Pops. A few days later, he had a mild heart attack after another
performance. He collapsed while studying music scores in his
Brookline, Massachusetts home and suffered
cardiac arrest. After his death,
Boston named a footbridge over
Storrow Drive after him and honored him with a stylized, oversized bust of him near the
Charles River Esplanade.
This area is home of the free concert series that continues through the present day. Composer
John Williams succeeded Fiedler as the orchestra's nineteenth director.
Viewfinder links:
Arthur Fiedler articles/mentions
Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky ~ 1812 Overture
Tchaikovsky ~ 1812 Overture (Antal Dorati)
John Williams ~ A Soundtrack King
Net links:
Discography
PBS ~ Arthur Fiedler: Evening at the Pops
NY Times - You're the Pops ~ Arthur Fiedler Papa, the Pops and Me
YouTube links:
Arthur Fiedler & the Boston Pops
date & photographer unknown
