Hartford Symphony Orchestra Informations

The Hartford Symphony Orchestra (HSO) is an American orchestra based in Hartford, Connecticut.

The orchestra presents more than 230 concerts annually to audiences numbering more than 110,000.

The Hartford Symphony Orchestra’s extensive array of Education and Community Activities serves more than 22,000 individuals in Hartford and surrounding communities annually.

The Hartford Symphony Orchestra is supported by nearly 4,500 subscribers and over 2,000 donors. The organization has been greatly strengthened by an extensive level of communication and involvement with its musicians that has become a national model for orchestral governance. Now representing 15% of the Board of Directors and one-third of its Executive Committee, musicians also serve on all major Board committees.

The Federal government established the Federal Emergency Relief Corporation, which included a program to help struggling musicians through the economic depression. Amateur musician and businessman Francis Goodwin II, considered today to be the “Father of the Hartford Symphony,” seized the opportunity to bring orchestral music to the city of Hartford. His Federal “Orchestra Application” was accepted, resulting in the creation of the Hartford Symphony Orchestra, then known as the “Civic Symphony Orchestra of Hartford.” Created as a public service, the orchestra gave two free concerts per week, and the musicians rehearsed every day for a weekly salary of $21. The Civic Symphony Orchestra of Hartford performed its first concert on November 20, 1934 under music director Angelo Coniglione at West Middle School in Hartford. Although this first concert did not bring in a huge audience, it was generally considered to be a promising start to the orchestra’s future.

The Federal government disbanded the Federal Emergency Relief Corporation in 1935 and instead began a larger program called the Federal Music Project (FMP). This project was a subdivision of the Works Progress Administration (WPA) of the New Deal. Many orchestras in the United States were born out of the funding from this project. To the Hartford Symphony, being a part of the Federal Music Project meant they could pay musicians higher wages and charge a moderate admission of 25¢.

In 1936, Jacques Gordon replaced Angelo Coniglione as conductor and music director and the name of the orchestra officially changed to the “Hartford Symphony Orchestra.” The Symphony’s concerts schedule expanded with performances in The Bushnell, as well as public venues across Connecticut, Massachusetts, and Rhode Island. However, the next year the WPA changed its policies so that orchestras could not charge admission. However, the Hartford Symphony continued to bring in revenue by cleverly charging each patron 10¢ to rent a seat for summer concerts. At the first part of the summer concert that year, Francis Goodwin receives a telegram explaining that the Federal Music Project was changing its policies and that the Hartford Symphony would need to cover half of its own costs or it would lose all Federal funding. Panicked, Mr. Goodwin stood up at intermission and appealed to the audience for its financial support. A box was passed around, and by the end of the concert they had collected $1,200! The next day the contributions continued to roll in, saving the orchestra from financial disaster and initiating the strong connection between the Hartford Symphony and the Hartford community.

In the past the FMP had always had dictated which guest artists and conductors would be allowed to perform. Looking for complete artistic control over the orchestra, the Hartford Symphony pulled out of the FMP in 1938 in order to hire conductor Leon Barzin as the new music director. Despite the Symphony’s poor financial status from a lack of government funding, the orchestra’s four-concert season was the most illustrious the orchestra had ever seen; it featured world-famous soloists and a high ticket revenue from $3 admission prices. In an effort to raise community spirits, the following year the City of Hartford funded five successful summer concerts with guest conductor George Heck at the podium. Bushnell Park’s outdoor bandshell was torn down at the end of this summer series, marking the end of the first decade of the Hartford Symphony’s history.

Ever since the decision was made to forgo Federal funding in 1938, the Hartford Symphony had been struggling to keep its doors open. Board member Francis Goodwin, considered to be the “Father of the Hartford Symphony,” even put up $11,000 in personal collateral to finance a loan for the Symphony. (The Symphony was later unable to pay back the loan, and Goodwin’s personal collateral was confiscated.) Despite this financial distress, the Hartford Symphony presented five concerts in the Bushnell which featured all-Beethoven programming. These concerts marked the highest attendance the orchestra had experienced in its six-year history.

The Hartford Symphony played the last of its successful Beethoven concerts on May 14, 1941. By this time, World War II had swept through Europe, and by the fall of 1941 nearly all of the Hartford Symphony’s musicians had taken leave to join the armed forces. With crippled finances and no musicians, the orchestra only existed as a corporate entity and it did not seem likely that Connecticut would ever hear the Hartford Symphony again.

In a final effort to save the Hartford Symphony, Francis Goodwin pulled together a new Board of Directors in 1946 composed of prominent Hartford businessmen, including Willard B. Rogers, the Commissioner of the Connecticut Department of Economic and Community Development, as President of the Hartford Symphony Board.

In an unprecedented action, Hartford’s musicians’ union agreed to perform for free for one year in an effort to get the Symphony up and running again. The Hartford Symphony was then free to use what little funds they had to pay for technical costs. In 1947 they hired two alternating co-conductors: George Heck, Dean of what is now the Hartford Conservatory, and Moshe Paranov, Dean of The Hartt School.

The Hartford Symphony’s first concert back was held on January 25, 1948 in Mortensen Hall. For the first time, patrons could buy subscriptions ($6 for seats at four concerts in either the Orchestra or Front Balcony section) or pay $1 per concert for a seat in the rest of the house. The audiences were much larger than the Symphony had seen in the past, with more than 1,000 paid admissions at every concert. After observing this heartfelt struggle to revive the Hartford Symphony, Travelers Insurance Company, in conjunction with radio station WTIC-FM, offered up a generous gift of $30,000 over the course of three years to the Hartford Symphony. After the first $10,000 installment in 1948, the HSO was finally able to open official administrative offices in the first floor of the Old State House, and, more importantly, was able to pay the musicians scale wages.

The Hartford Symphony’s 1949 – 1950 concert season expanded to six concerts in the Bushnell instead of four. In addition, Arthur Fiedler guest conducted the first Hartford Symphony Pops! concerts at The Bushnell and the Trinity Field House, where audience members sat at cabaret-style tables and were served food and drink by white-coated Trinity Students. It was noted this year that the orchestra played better than ever before; it seemed that musicians and audience members alike had a renewed interest in keeping the Hartford Symphony in business.

After the financial growth of the 1940s, the Hartford Symphony was able to perform six traditional concerts in The Bushnell with several nationally and internationally renowned guest performers, including Walton Deckelman, piano; Bela Urban, violin; Joseph De Pasquale, viola; Seymour Benstock, cello; and Cynthia Otis, harp. Odell Shepard, a former Lieutenant Governor of Connecticut, was even invited to narrate Aaron Copland’s A Lincoln Portrait.

The Symphony decided that Fritz Mahler would soon replace Moshe Paranov and George Heck as the new conductor of the Hartford Symphony, with a salary of $7,500 per year. At first, the public was very upset over the decision to hire Fritz Mahler; local newspapers slammed the Symphony for firing the two former Hartford Symphony conductors. On October 28, 1953 Fritz Mahler conducted his first concert with the Hartford Symphony in a program that featured the Boston Symphony’s principal cellist, Samuel Mayes, premiering Kabalevsky’s Concerto for Cello. Although the concert was well attended, there was still backlash from press about new conductor.

Determined to see the Hartford Symphony expand and flourish, Mahler developed educational and outreach programs. He began his series of “Young People’s Concerts” at The Bushnell, and appointed Mrs. Rena Oppenheimer as Educational Director. She traveled to local grade schools to present instrument demonstrations and promote the “Young People’s Concerts.” Mahler also started the “Hartford Little Symphony”- a reduced orchestra that would play run-out concerts at Avon Old Farms School, Miss Porter’s School, the Duffy School, and the Verplank School.

Mahler infused a sense of variety into the Symphony’s programming with performances of Prokofiev’s Alexander Nevsky, J. Strauss’ Die Fledermaus, an all-Tchaikovsky program, a performance of “Show Boat,” two Pops! concerts, and a program entitled “Theater in the Dance,” featuring the José Limon Dancers with Pauline Koner (Mrs. Fritz Mahler) as a soloist. In 1954, the Hartford Symphony performed the American premiere of Carl Orff’s Carmina Burana. After hearing the piece for the first time, audiences jumped to their feet with standing ovations and the local papers overflowed with excellent reviews.

On March 27, 1957 the Symphony recorded Carmina Burana on the Vanguard record label. Fritz Mahler continued the Hartford Symphony’s recording project with the Vanguard label, recording three new albums: Berlioz’s Requiem, Gustav Mahler’s Das Klagende Lied, and Bloch’s Three Jewish Poems for Orchestra and Copland’s Variations for Orchestra and Fanfare for the Common Man.

The sixties opened with a general sense of uneasiness amongst the Hartford Symphony administration over the symphony’s lack of growth in the past few years. Newly elected Hartford Symphony President Francis Goodwin, who is considered to be the “Father of the Hartford Symphony,” was determined to make the Hartford Symphony the “really great orchestra” he had always dreamed it could be. Although the Symphony had received local accolades for its recent accomplishments, it had not yet reached the status Goodwin felt it could achieve.

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