In Sunday’s (10/7) Reading Eagle (Pennsylvania), Susan L. Peña writes, “In 1913, a group of Reading-area musicians rehearsed in an unheated hall that was so cold the delicate brass instruments, as susceptible to a chill as their human owners, went sadly out of tune. Imagine fingers so frozen they could hardly press a string or hold a drumstick. They were paid the handsome sum of 50 cents per rehearsal and $2.50 per concert, and even that was hard to come by. Led by conductor Harry Fahrbach, a former dance- and theater-orchestra leader, they were the first incarnation of the Reading Symphony Orchestra, now celebrating its 100th anniversary season. Those first hopeful, earnest conveyors of classical music would be astonished to learn that the RSO, under its current music director Andrew Constantine, has a budget of $1.2 million … On Sunday, Nov. 30, 1913 at 3 p.m.—flouting the Pennsylvania Sunday Blue Laws, which forbade selling tickets to any gathering on Sunday—the RSO performed its first formal concert at the Hippodrome on Penn Street, a vaudeville theater.” Peña goes on to give a historical survey of the orchestra, including its period of growth under Sidney Rothstein, who was music director for 30 years beginning in 1976.
Posted October 9, 2012
