Missouri Classical Music News

Polish-born Artur Rodzinski was the music director of the New York Philharmonic from 1943 to 1947. He was an eccentric, a health nut who drank only milk from goats he raised himself on a farm in Stockbridge, Massachusetts and who kept a loaded revolver in his back pocket whenever he conducted.

Rodzinski said that God told him to hire young Leonard Bernstein, of Lawrence, Massachusetts and Harvard, to be the assistant conductor of the New York Philharmonic. Wisely acting on this advice in the summer of 1943, Rodzinski was responsible in more than one way for what radio audiences heard on Sunday, Nov. 14 1943, when they tuned in to their regular Philharmonic radio broadcast. "Good afternoon, United States Rubber Company again invites you to Carnegie Hall, to hear a concert of the New York Philharmonic Symphony Orchestra [sic], of which Artur Rodskinski is musical director. Bruno Walter, who was to have conducted this afternoon, is ill, and his place will be taken by the young American born assistant conductor of the Philharmonic Symphony, Leonard Bernstein."