Noteworthy

A historic organ restored and anniversaries celebrated

by Michael Caruso
Posted 12/25/24

Although it took far longer than anticipated when the project was decided upon several years ago, the Aeolian-Skinner pipe organ at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, Chestnut Hill, finally made its re-debut in September in a re-dedicatory recital performed by Cherry Rhodes.

While Rhodes’ skill as a performer showed off the organ in a special fashion, more important has been hearing it being played by Andrew Kotylo, the parish’s director of music, during regular church services.

The organ boasts 114 ranks and more than 7,300 pipes. It can replicate the sumptuous sounds of a …

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Noteworthy

A historic organ restored and anniversaries celebrated

Posted

Although it took far longer than anticipated when the project was decided upon several years ago, the Aeolian-Skinner pipe organ at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, Chestnut Hill, finally made its re-debut in September in a re-dedicatory recital performed by Cherry Rhodes.

While Rhodes’ skill as a performer showed off the organ in a special fashion, more important has been hearing it being played by Andrew Kotylo, the parish’s director of music, during regular church services.

The organ boasts 114 ranks and more than 7,300 pipes. It can replicate the sumptuous sounds of a full symphony orchestra or evoke the bracing clarity of the baroque instruments of the time of Johann Sebastian Bach. I had the chance, via live stream, to hear it twice Sunday, Dec. 15: at the 11 a.m. Holy Eucharist Service and then at the 5 p.m. “Lessons and Carols.”

A Host of Anniversaries

Perhaps the most noteworthy of all the local anniversaries is the centenary of the founding of the Curtis Institute of Music back in 1924. It was then that Leopold Stokowski, the legendary maestro and music director of the Philadelphia Orchestra persuaded Mary Louise Curtis to provide $25 million to establish an endowment for a classical music conservatory based on the “Russian model” of the conservatories in St. Petersburg and Moscow.

“Stoki,” as he was famously called, had noticed that almost all of Philadelphia’s most talented young musicians left the city upon graduating from high school because there wasn’t a world class conservatory in town. Off they went to the Juilliard School of Music in New York City, or the Peabody Conservatory of Music in Baltimore, or the New England Conservatory in Boston. What Philadelphia needed was a music school to rival those three temples of classical music education.

Mary Louise Curtis – the heir to the Curtis Publishing Company fortune – had previously given more than $8 million to the Settlement Music School in 1917 to build its central branch in the Queen Village section of town. Within Settlement was a “conservatory division” for its brightest and most promising students. This would form the basis for the Curtis Institute of Music, located just east of Rittenhouse Square at 18th & Locust Streets. 

Like its Russian models, it would be an all-scholarship institution that never charged tuition and that, today, even provides room and board for its approximately 150 students. With Roberto Diaz at the helm, Curtis maintains its pre-eminence among the world’s classical music conservatories, producing virtuosos in all its disciplines. 

AVA’S 90TH

A short ten years later, and only a few blocks away at 1920 Spruce Street, Helen Corning Warden founded the Academy of Vocal Arts. It remains the only music conservatory in America focused solely on the training of professional singers.

With an intentionally small enrollment of about 30 students, AVA provides an all-around education on establishing and maintaining a professional career. Its roster of recent graduates is heard and seen on all the major opera stages in the world. 

Of equal importance to local opera lovers, it proffers a season of fully staged productions drawn from the standard opera repertoire as well as a series of concerts and recitals that are often the highlight of the region’s season.

Happy 60TH!

Both the Philadelphia Ballet and the Chamber Orchestra of Philadelphia are celebrating their 60thanniversary seasons. In an interesting connection, both started under different monikers.

Barbara Weisberger, a student of George Balanchine in New York City, founded the Pennsylvania Ballet in the early 1960s at Balanchine’s urging. He was eager to spread his neo-classical style and Philadelphia seemed the perfect venue for doing so.

Although there were years of struggle and turmoil, the company – recently renamed the “Philadelphia Ballet” – is soaring higher than ever before under the artistic direction of Angel Corella, a former star of the American Ballet Theater and now in his tenth year of leadership. The company offers a bracing combination of classical, romantic and contemporary styles throughout its season performed in the historic Academy of Music.

Chamber Orchestra

It was 60 years ago this season that Marc Mostovoy founded the Concerto Soloists of Philadelphia as an instrumental ensemble that would specialize in the baroque and classical repertoires of the 17th and 18th centuries. Smaller by far in number than the Philadelphia Orchestra, the Concerto Soloists played works by the famous trio of the baroque era – Antonio Vivaldi, Johann Sebastian Bach and George Frideric Handel – but Mostovoy almost always spiced his programs with works by lesser-known composers. 

As the fashion moved away from playing baroque and early classical music on modern instruments toward using historic re-creations of those older models, the Concerto Soloists Chamber Orchestra morphed into the Chamber Orchestra of Philadelphia when the Kimmel Center for the Performing Arts opened in 2000.

Following in the footsteps of the recently departed Dirk Brosse, music director David Hayes is leading the Chamber Orchestra in a multi-faceted season in the Kimmel Center’s Perelman Theater.

You can contact NOTEWORTHY at Michael-caruso@comcast.net.