The Boston Symphony Orchestra
The Boston Symphony Orchestra is something more than half a century old. More notable than the span of its years is its place in the growth of musical America. In 1881, the late Major Henry L. Higginson realized the first dream and aspiration of his life by founding in Boston an orchestra of European standards, a phenomenon then unknown in America. The idea had come to him as a student in Vienna. It was an ambitious dream of an impecunious young man but after many years, having made his fortune as a banker, he was able to give the Boston Symphony Orchestra to the world. He engaged the finest musicians in Europe and brought to this country a succession of the greatest conductors of their time. He set a new precedent by exacting of the musicians entire devotion of their talent to the orchestra. He gave entire artistic freedom to the conductor. The wisdom of these policies soon showed as each conductor expended his genius to the cumulative improvement of an ensemble which soon had the world’s attention. The present director is the famous Dr. Serge Koussevitsky who began in 1924, and his term as conductor has extended far beyond any single term of the ten previous conductors. The long association of such an orchestra with such a leader is eloquently justified by the results. The great Russian conductor has brought new beauties to the Boston Symphony Orchestra, a fresh importance and distinction reflected in the greatly enlarged public. The festivals and special choral concerts, the broadened repertory, new and old, of the regular concerts and the quality of each performance are as indefinable as the genius which directs them. After you have viewed the auditorium and the huge organ, almost directly across the street on the corner of Gainsboro and Huntington Avenue, we find the famous