Musicians - Frederick Stock

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	Musicians - Frederick Stock

Frederick Stock (November 11 1872 in Jülich, Germany - October 20 1942) was a U.S. (German-born) conductor and composer.

As a youth, Stock was given his early musical education by his army bandmaster father. At the age of fourteen, Frederick Stock was admitted into the Cologne Conservatory as a student of violin and composition, where he counted Engelbert Humperdinck as one of his teachers, and Willem Mengelberg among his classmates. After graduating from the conservatory in 1890, Stock was accepted to the Municipal Orchestra of Cologne as a violinist. In 1895, Stock met with Theodore Thomas, director of the then fledgling Chicago Symphony Orchestra and the man who was to have a decisive impact on Stock's future. Thomas, who was then visiting Germany in search of recruits for his Chicago Symphony, auditioned Stock and gave him a position as violist in the orchestra. Thomas soon realized, however, that his new violist was also a very talented conductor and in 1899, Stock was promoted to assistant conductor. After Theodore Thomas' sudden death in 1905, Frederick Stock took over the post of Music Director of the Chicago Symphony. At first filling in the position only on a temporary basis, Frederick Stock finally assumed the role of permanent Music Director in 1911 only after the Chicago Symphony's board of directors failed to persuade Gustav Mahler, Hans Richter, Felix Weingartner, Karl Muck, and Felix Mottl, among others, to take over the position.

Under Stock's direction, the Chicago Symphony became one of America's top orchestras, developing a distinctive brass sound that can already be heard in the orchestra's first recordings. An enthusiast of modern music, Stock championed the works of many then modern composers including Mahler, Richard Strauss, Stravinsky (his Symphony in C was commissioned for the orchestra's 50th anniversary), Prokofiev (whose Third Piano Concerto was given its world premiere in Chicago with the composer at the piano), Holst, Kodály (whose Concerto for Orchestra was commissioned by Stock), Myaskovsky, Suk, Walton, Benjamin, Enescu, and many others. In 1916 the Chicago Symphony, under Stock's baton, made its first set of recordings for the Columbia label. In fact, these recordings were the first ever made by an American orchestra under its music director. The orchestra would later record for RCA Victor, then go back to Columbia, only to finally go back to RCA Victor in 1941-1942 for its final series of recordings under Stock. Stock's last studio recording, Chausson's Symphony in B minor, was released posthumously in 1943.

An underrated conductor, Stock wasn't a glamorous figure like Stokowski, Nikisch, or Toscanini. Self-effacing on the podium, Stock directed the listener's attention away from the conductor and to the music itself. This did not mean he was a boring conductor, however, as his thrilling recordings of Wagner, Tchaikovsky, Glière, Brahms and others testify. Unfortunately, because of his rather modest manner, Stock has failed to garner the attention, fame, and respect of listeners that he richly deserves. His recordings, hard to come by in the CD era, have been intermittently available from Biddulph, Dante/Lys, and from the Chicago Symphony's website.

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