Hi-Fi Fiedler

Read About This Recording

Known as the people's maestro and credited with popularizing classical music for millions, the venerable Boston Pops conductor Arthur Fiedler harbored a lifelong love for serious music in addition to the light classics that made him so famous.

"The trouble is you get labeled," Fielder said in 1972 in his 43rd-anniversary year as head of the Pops. "They don't realize I can do other things, too. I wouldn't say Mahler or Bruckner, much as I admire those composers. But I conduct purely serious concerts when I can. I suppose every clown wants to play Hamlet."

In reality Fiedler, by the time he died in 1979, had probably conducted more concerts with more orchestras than any other conductor in the United States. In the 1970s, for example, he maintained a series of engagements that kept him flying back and forth across the country all summer. He conducted at the Saratoga Performing Arts Center with the Philadelphia Orchestra, at the Hollywood Bowl with the Los Angeles Philharmonic and at the Ravinia Festival with the Chicago Symphony (his favorite). Only when he reached 80 did he make it a rule to conduct in only one city per day.

Once regarded by Boston Symphony conductor Serge Koussevitsky as a dangerous rival, the people's maestro himself was a guest conductor of that august orchestra, once scheduling a performance of Dvorák's Fourth Symphony — a work the BSO had not played in years. Before his Pops days, in the mid-1920s, he also accomplished a feat that thrilled him more than his founding of the famous free Esplanade concerts on Boston's riverfront. This was the establishment of a chamber orchestra he called the Boston Sinfonietta, which he regarded as his own little Boston Symphony. The ensemble, which received excellent reviews, was purely classical and serious and counted among its accomplishments the world premiere of Paul Hindemith's Viola Concerto with Hindemith himself as soloist.

In terms of recording, Fiedler's recordings sold more than 50 million copies during his lifetime. "When I first started recording I did an awful lot of large works — whole symphonies," he pointed out. With a voracious appetite for new orchestral works, he discovered and recorded many, including Jacob Gade's "Jalousie," RCA's first classical recording to sell one million copies. In the 1950s he also made the world premiere recording of the celebrated Pachelbel "Canon."

Admittedly, Fiedler and the Pops were sensational with their programs that frequently featured show and pop tunes and march melodies such as "Stars and Stripes Forever," but the conductor regarded them as a light dessert after a chunk of beef meal. The chunks were frequently concertos and, in fact, Fielder was proud that he presented more of the Mozart piano concertos than did the Boston Symphony itself. Over the years he featured performances of such pieces as Beethoven's "Wellington's Victory," Gershwin's Second Rhapsody, the world premiere of Piston's "The Incredible Flutist," the American premieres of Walton's "Facade" and the Khachaturian Violin Concerto and the Boston premieres of concertos by Poulenc and Shostakovich. He also gave the acclaimed U.S. premiere and recorded for the first time the Paderewski Piano Concerto.

"No one loves me except the American public," Fiedler once quipped. Named Musician of the Year by Stereo Review in 1977, he was lauded by composer Morton Gould, who noted that Arthur had charisma before there was such a word.

Contents

Rimsky-Korsakov: The Golden Cockerel Suite; Rossini: William Tell Overture; Tchaikovsky: Marche slave; Chabrier: Espana; Liszt: Hungarian Rhapsody No. 2, Rakoczy March.

The Boston Pops; Arthur Fiedler, Conductor.