Overture Magazine - 2015-2016 Season September-October 2015 | Page 13

BSO

FIRSTS

1916

First U.S. orchestra
is created using
public funds
was a lack of artistic growth. “But by not growing
While the book commemorates 100 years of mu[the Symphony] it brought in people to right the ship.”
sical development, it is the characters and zany stories
Most important of those people would be Joseph
that Lisicky finds most engaging. There’s Werner
Meyerhoff, who became BSO president in 1965 (the
Janssen, conductor from 1937–39, who Baltimoreans
same year the BSO hired its first African-American
exalted less for his musical prowess than for the fact
musician, trumpeter Wilmer Wise). Meyerhoff
that he was married to film star Ann Harding.
hired the Orchestra’s first “star” maestro, Sergiu
Ditto Massimo Freccia, music director in 1952,
Comissiona, the Orchestra’s first investment in a real
whose fashionable, Cuban-born wife was the
music director, not simply a conductor. Comissiona
toast of the Baltimore Sun style pages. There are
raised the BSO’s national and international
tales of performances at the Lyric where
credibility and helped it draw more presti“WE ALWAYS prominent soloists were upstaged by the
gious soloists. Under Meyerhoff, the new PERSEVERED display put on by that building’s resident
OVER
symphony hall opened in 1982, providing
bats, and the episode in the ’40s when the
MONUMENTAL Orchestra was on tour as their train broke
the Orchestra a permanent home.
“Meyerhoff’s relationship with Comis- CHAL