Original, printed concert programme insert for two concerts conducted in New York by John Barbirolli

The piano soloist in Beethoven was Sergei Rachmaninov

The Philharmonic-Symphony Society of New York, 98th Season, 1939-1940

Carnegie Hall, New York 3581st and 3582nd Concerts

10 February 1940, Wednesday Evening at 8.45pm
12 February 1940, Friday Afternoon at 2.30pm

Weber Overture to 'Oberon'
Beethoven Concerto for Piano and Orchestra, in C major, No. 1, Op. 15
Bruckner Symphony in E major, No. 7

Sergei Rachmaninov piano

[New York Philharmonic] manager Arthur Judson, assistant manager Bruno Zirato

John Barbirolli conductor

Programme notes by Pitts Sanborn; biographical note for Rachmaninoff; list of the Auxiliary Board of the Society

Future concerts : Anatol Kaminsky with Barbirolli (Glazounov, Rossini, Delius, Sibelius)

8 pages, centre stapled; 9 x 6 inches (23 x 15cm)

Condition : Very good; minor wear incl. two faint vertical bruises. A nice copy

I will package carefully and am happy to post worldwide : UK £1.50 Europe £4.50 Worldwide £6 (Postage combined and reduced for multiple purchases posted together)

Concerts program programm programmes new york philharmonic programmheft 1940s 1940's nineteen forties 40s 40's legendary conductors
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Sergei Vasilievich Rachmaninoff (Russian: Серге́й Васи́льевич Рахма́нинов) (Russian pronunciation: [sʲɪrˈɡʲej rɐxˈmanʲɪnəf]; 1 April 1873 – 28 March 1943) was a Russian composer, pianist, and conductor. Rachmaninoff is widely considered one of the finest pianists of his day and, as a composer, one of the last great representatives of Romanticism in Russian classical music. Early influences of Tchaikovsky, Rimsky-Korsakov, and other Russian composers gave way to a thoroughly personal idiom that included a pronounced lyricism, expressive breadth, structural ingenuity, and a tonal palette of rich, distinctive orchestral colors. The piano is featured prominently in Rachmaninoff's compositional output. He made a point of using his own skills as a performer to explore fully the expressive possibilities of the instrument. Even in his earliest works he revealed a sure grasp of idiomatic piano writing and a striking gift for melody.

Life
Youth
Main article: Youth of Sergei Rachmaninoff
Rachmaninoff was born on 1 April [O.S. 20 March] 1873 in Semyonovo, near Great Novgorod, in north-western Russia into a family of the Russian aristocracy, originally of partly Tatar descent, which had been in the service of the Russian tsars since the 16th century. His parents were both amateur pianists. When he was four, his mother gave him casual piano lessons,[5] but it was his paternal grandfather, Arkady Alexandrovich Rachmaninoff, who brought Anna Ornatskaya, a teacher from Saint Petersburg, to teach the 9 year old Sergei in 1882. Ornatskaya remained for two or three years, until the family's house in Semyonovo had to be sold to settle debts and the Rachmaninoffs moved to Saint Petersburg.
Rachmaninoff studied at the Saint Petersburg Conservatory before moving alone to Moscow at age 14 to enroll at the Moscow Imperial Conservatory. His parents arranged for him to live in the home of his piano teacher, the severe and autocratic Nikolai Zverev who, Rachmaninoff admitted in later interviews, instilled in the formerly rather lazy boy the disciplined work habits which would serve him well. [6]
The young Rachmaninoff showed great skill in both piano and composition which he studied with Anton Arensky, and while still a student he wrote the one-act opera, Aleko, for which he was awarded a gold medal in composition. His First Piano Concerto, and a group of piano pieces, Morceaux de fantaisie (Op. 3, 1892), a set which includes the famous Prelude in C-sharp minor followed. It was the great success of this Prelude (Op. 3, No. 2), which sold thousands of copies under various and sometimes lurid titles, that made Rachmaninoff a well known composer both in Russia and in the West, however he came eventually to detest it since it was so often demanded as an encore at his recitals. In later years he sometimes teased an expectant audience by asking, "Oh, must I?" or claiming an inability to remember it.[7] Zverev and his student fell out over Rachmaninoff's ambition to be a composer and Alexander Siloti, who was Rachmaninoff's cousin and had been one of the greatest of Franz Liszt's pupils became his teacher. [8][6]
While still a student at the Conservatory, he met the composer Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky, who became an important mentor and commissioned the teenage Rachmaninoff to arrange a piano transcription of the suite from his ballet The Sleeping Beauty. This commission had first been offered to Siloti, who declined, but suggested instead that Rachmaninoff would be more than capable. Siloti supervised the arrangement which became the first of many brilliant and effective transcriptions Rachmaninoff would write over the course of his career. He graduated from the Conservatory in 1892 in an extraordinary class in which he shared the Gold Medal for Piano with Josef Lhévinne and fellow composer/pianist Alexander Scriabin.
Setbacks and recovery
The sudden death of Tchaikovsky in 1893 was a great blow to young Rachmaninoff; he immediately began writing a second Trio élégiaque in his memory, revealing the depth and sincerity of his grief in the music's overwhelming aura of gloom.[9] His First Symphony (Op. 13, 1896) was premièred on 28 March 1897 in one of a long-running series of "Russian Symphony Concerts", but was brutally panned by critic and nationalist composer César Cui who likened it to a depiction of the ten plagues of Egypt, suggesting it would be admired by the "inmates" of a music conservatory in hell.[10] The deficiencies of the performance, conducted by Alexander Glazunov, were not commented on.[9] Alexander Ossovsky in his memoir about Rachmaninoff[11] tells, first hand, a story about this event.[12] In Ossovsky's opinion, Glazunov made poor use of rehearsal time, and the concert program itself, which contained two other premières, was also a factor. Natalia Satina, later Rachmaninoff's wife, and other witnesses suggested that Glazunov, who was by all accounts an alcoholic, may have been drunk, although this was never intimated by Rachmaninoff.[13][14]
The failure of Symphony No. 1 (1897) long bothered Rachmaninoff.
After the poor reception of his First Symphony, Rachmaninoff fell into a period of deep depression that lasted three years, during which he wrote almost nothing. One stroke of good fortune came from Savva Mamontov, a famous Russian industrialist and patron of the arts, who two years earlier had founded the Moscow Private Russian Opera Company. He offered Rachmaninoff the post of assistant conductor for the 1897–8 season and the cash-strapped composer accepted. The company included the great basso Feodor Chaliapin who would become a lifelong friend.[15] During this period he became engaged to fellow pianist Natalia Satina whom he had known since childhood and who was his first cousin. The Russian Orthodox Church and the girl's parents both opposed their marriage and this thwarting of their plans only deepened Rachmaninoff's depression.
In January 1900, Rachmaninoff and Chaliapin were invited to Yasnaya Polyana, the home of writer Leo Tolstoy, whom Rachmaninoff greatly admired. That evening, Rachmaninoff played one of his compositions, then accompanied Chaliapin in his song "Fate", one of the pieces he had written after his First Symphony. At the end of the performance, Tolstoy took the composer aside and asked, "Is such music needed by anyone? I must tell you how I dislike it all. Beethoven is nonsense, Pushkin and Lermontov also." (The song "Fate" is based on the two opening measures of Beethoven's Fifth Symphony.) As his guests were leaving, Tolstoy said, "Forgive me if I've hurt you by my comments," and Rachmaninoff graciously replied, "How could I be hurt on my own account, if I was not hurt on Beethoven's?" but the criticism of the great author stung nevertheless.
In the same year, Rachmaninoff began a course of autosuggestive therapy with psychologist Nikolai Dahl, who was himself an excellent though amateur musician. Rachmaninoff began to recover his confidence and eventually he was able to overcome his writer's block. In 1901 he completed his Piano Concerto No. 2 in C minor, Op. 18 and dedicated it to Dr. Dahl. The piece was enthusiastically received at its premiere at which Rachmaninoff was soloist and has since become one of the most popular and frequently played concertos in the repertoire. Rachmaninoff's spirits were further bolstered when, after three years of engagement, he was finally allowed to marry his beloved Natalia. They were wed in a suburb of Moscow by an army priest on 29 April 1902, using the family's military background to circumvent the church. The marriage was a happy one, producing two daughters - Irina, later Princess Wolkonsky (1903-1969) and Tatiana Conus (1907-1961). Although Rachmaninoff had an affair with the 22-year-old singer Nina Koshetz in 1916,[16] his and Natalia's union lasted until the composer's death. Natalia Rachmaninova died in 1951.
After several successful appearances as a conductor, Rachmaninoff was offered a job as conductor at the Bolshoi Theatre in 1904, although political reasons led to his resignation in March 1906, after which he stayed in Italy until July. He spent the following three winters in Dresden, Germany, intensively composing, and returning to the family estate of Ivanovka every summer.[17]
Rachmaninoff made his first tour of the United States as a pianist in 1909, an event for which he composed the Piano Concerto No. 3 (Op. 30, 1909) as a calling card. These successful concerts made him a popular figure in America, however he was unhappy on the tour and declined requests for future American concerts until after he emigrated from Russia in 1917.[17] This included an offer to become permanent conductor of the Boston Symphony Orchestra.[18]
The early death in 1915 of Alexander Scriabin, who had been his good friend and fellow student at the Moscow Conservatory, affected Rachmaninoff so deeply that he went on a tour giving concerts entirely devoted to Scriabin's music. When asked to play some of his own music, he would reply, "Only Scriabin tonight".
Emigration and career in the West
The 1917 Russian Revolution meant the end of Russia as the composer had known it. With this change followed the loss of his estate, his way of life, and his livelihood. On 22 December 1917, he left St. Petersburg for Helsinki with his wife and two daughters on an open sled, having only a few notebooks with sketches of his own compositions and two orchestral scores, his unfinished opera Monna Vanna and Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov's opera The Golden Cockerel. He spent a year giving concerts in Scandinavia while also laboring to widen his concert repertoire. Near the end of 1918, he received three offers of lucrative American contracts. Although he declined all three, he decided the United States might offer a solution to his financial concerns. He departed Kristiania (Oslo) for New York on 1 November 1918. Once there, Rachmaninoff quickly chose an agent, Charles Ellis, and accepted the gift of a piano from Steinway before playing 40 concerts in a four-month period. At the end of the 1919–20 season, he also signed a contract with the Victor Talking Machine Company. In 1921, the Rachmaninoffs bought a house in the United States, where they consciously recreated the atmosphere of Ivanovka, entertaining Russian guests, employing Russian servants, and observing Russian customs.[19]
Due to his busy concert career, Rachmaninoff's output as composer slowed tremendously. Between 1918 and his death in 1943, while living in the U.S. and Europe, he completed only six compositions. This was partly due to spending much of his time performing in order to support himself and his family, but the main cause was homesickness. It was during these years that he traveled the United States as a touring pianist.[20] When he left Russia, it was as if he had left behind his inspiration. His revival as a composer became possible only after he had built himself a new home, Villa Senar on Lake Lucerne, Switzerland, where he spent summers from 1932 to 1939. There, in the comfort of his own villa which reminded him of his old family estate, Rachmaninoff composed the Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini, one of his best known works, in 1934. He went on to compose his Symphony No. 3 (Op. 44, 1935–36) and the Symphonic Dances (Op. 45, 1940), his last completed work. Eugene Ormandy and the Philadelphia Orchestra premiered the Symphonic Dances in 1941 in the Academy of Music.
In late 1940 or 1941 he was approached by the makers of the British film Dangerous Moonlight to write a short concerto-like piece for use in the film, but he declined. The job went to Richard Addinsell and the orchestrator Roy Douglas, who came up with the Warsaw Concerto.[21]
Friendship with Vladimir Horowitz
Just as the Rachmaninoff household in the United States strove to reclaim the lost world of pre-revolutionary Russia, Rachmaninoff also sought out the friendship and company of some great Russian musical luminaries. In addition to Chaliapin, he befriended pianist Vladimir Horowitz in 1928.
Arranged by Steinway artist representative Alexander Greiner, their meeting took place in the basement of New York's Steinway Hall, on 8 January 1928, four days prior to Horowitz’s debut at Carnegie Hall playing the Tchaikovsky First Piano Concerto. Referring to his own Third Piano Concerto, Rachmaninoff said to Greiner he heard that “Mr. Horowitz plays my Concerto very well. I would like to accompany him.”[22]
For Horowitz, it was a dream come true to meet Rachmaninoff, to whom he referred as “the musical God of my youth ... To think that this great man should accompany me in his own Third Concerto ... This was the most unforgettable impression of my life! This was my real debut!” Rachmaninoff was impressed by his younger colleague. Speaking of Horowitz’s interpretation to Abram Chasins, he said “He swallowed it whole ... he had the courage, the intensity, the daring.”[22]
The meeting between composer and interpreter marked the beginning of a friendship that continued until Rachmaninoff's death. The two were quite supportive of each other's careers and greatly admired each other's work. Horowitz stipulated to his manager that “If I am out of town when Rachmaninoff plays in New York, you must telegraph me, and you must let me come back, no matter where I am or what engagement I have.” Likewise Rachmaninoff was always present at Horowitz’s New York concerts and was “always the last to leave the hall.”[23]
Notably, the composer was present at Carnegie Hall for Horowitz’s American debut on 12 January 1928. Recognizing the great pianistic ability, Rachmaninoff offered his friendship and advice to Horowitz, telling him in a letter that “You play very well, but you went through the Tchaikovsky Concerto too rapidly, especially the cadenza."[23] Horowitz never agreed with the criticism of his tempo, and retained his interpretation in future performances of the work.[23]
Rachmaninoff and Horowitz frequently performed two-piano recitals at the composer's home in Beverly Hills. None of these performances, which included the Second Suite and the two-piano reduction of the Symphonic Dances, were recorded.
Rachmaninoff's faith in Horowitz's performances was such that, in 1940, with the composer's consent, Horowitz created a fusion of the 1913 original and 1931 revised versions of his Second Piano Sonata.[24]
For Rachmaninoff, Horowitz was a champion of both his solo works and his Third Concerto, about which Rachmaninoff remarked publicly after the 7 August 1942 Hollywood Bowl performance that “This is the way I always dreamed my concerto should be played, but I never expected to hear it that way on Earth.”
Illness and death
Rachmaninoff fell ill during a concert tour in late 1942 and was subsequently diagnosed with advanced melanoma. The family was informed but the composer was not. On 1 February 1943 he and his wife became American citizens.[25] His last recital, given on 17 February 1943 at the Alumni Gymnasium of the University of Tennessee in Knoxville, included Chopin's Piano Sonata No. 2, which contains the famous Marche funèbre (Funeral March). A statue called "Rachmaninoff: The Last Concert", designed and sculpted by Victor Bokarev, now stands in World Fair Park in Knoxville as a permanent tribute to Rachmaninoff. He became so ill after this recital that he had to return to his home in Los Angeles.[26]
Rachmaninoff died of melanoma on 28 March 1943, in Beverly Hills, California, just four days before his 70th birthday. A choir sang his All Night Vigil at his funeral. He had wanted to be buried at the Villa Senar, his estate in Switzerland, but the conditions of World War II made fulfilling this request impossible.[27] He was therefore interred on 1 June in Kensico Cemetery in Valhalla, New York.[28]
Fluctuating reputation
His reputation as a composer generated a variety of opinions, before his music gained steady recognition across the world. The 1954 edition of the Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians notoriously dismissed Rachmaninoff's music as "monotonous in texture ... consist[ing] mainly of artificial and gushing tunes" and predicted that his popular success was "not likely to last".[38] To this, Harold C. Schonberg, in his Lives of the Great Composers, responded, "It is one of the most outrageously snobbish and even stupid statements ever to be found in a work that is supposed to be an objective reference."[38]
The Conservatoire Rachmaninoff in Paris, as well as streets in Veliky Novgorod (which is close to his birthplace) and Tambov, are named after the composer. In 1986, Moscow Conservatory dedicated a concert hall on its premises to Rachmaninoff, designating the 252-seat auditorium Rachmaninoff Hall. A monument to Rachmaninoff was unveiled in Veliky Novgorod, near his birthplace, as recently as 14 June 2009.
Pianism
Technique
As a pianist, Rachmaninoff ranked among the finest pianists of his time, along with Leopold Godowsky, Ignaz Friedman, Moriz Rosenthal and Josef Hofmann, and is perhaps one of the greatest pianists in the history of classical music. He was famed for possessing a flawless, clean and inhuman virtuoso piano technique. His playing was marked by precision, rhythmic drive, an exceptionally accurate staccato and the ability to maintain complete clarity when playing works with complex textures. Rachmaninoff applied these qualities to excellent effect in music by Chopin, especially the B flat minor Piano Sonata. Rachmaninoff's repertoire, excepting his own works, consisted mainly of standard 19th Century virtuoso works plus music by Bach, Beethoven, Borodin, Debussy, Grieg, Liszt, Mendelssohn, Mozart, Schubert, Schumann and Tchaikovsky.[39]
Rhythmically, Rachmaninoff is considered one of the best Romantic performers. He never lost the basic metric pulse, yet he constantly varied it. Harold C. Schonberg suggests the young Vladimir Horowitz might have gotten this kind of rhythmic snap from Rachmaninoff. In addition, Rachmaninoff's playing had extreme musical elegance, with attention paid to the shape of the melodic line. His playing possessed a masculine, aristocratic kind of poetry. While never becoming sentimental, he managed to wring dry the emotional essence of the music. He did so through subtly nuanced phrasing within his strong, clear, unmannered projection of melodic lines.[40]
Rachmaninoff possessed extremely large hands, with which he could easily maneuver through the most complex chordal configurations. His left hand technique was unusually powerful. His playing was marked by definition—where other pianists' playing became blurry-sounding from overuse of the pedal or deficiencies in finger technique, Rachmaninoff's textures were always crystal clear. Only Josef Hofmann shared this kind of clarity with him.[41] Both men had Anton Rubinstein as a model for this kind of playing—Hofmann as a student of Rubinstein's[42] and Rachmaninoff from hearing his famous series of historical recitals in Moscow while studying with Zverev.[43]
The two pieces Rachmaninoff singled out for praise from Rubinstein's concerts became cornerstones for his own recital programs. The compositions were Beethoven's Appassionata and Chopin's Funeral March Sonata. He may have based his interpretation of the Chopin sonata on Rubinstein's. Rachmaninoff biographer Barrie Martyn points out similarities between written accounts of Rubinstein's interpretation and Rachmaninoff's audio recording of the work.[44]
As part of his daily warm-up exercises, Rachmaninoff would play the phenomenally difficult Étude in A flat, Op. 1, No. 2, attributed to Paul de Schlözer.[45]
Tone
From those barely moving fingers came an unforced, bronzelike sonority and an accuracy bordering on infallibility. Correct notes seemed to be built into his constitution, and a wrong note at a Rachmaninoff recital was an exceedingly rare event.[46] Arthur Rubinstein wrote:
He had the secret of the golden, living tone which comes from the heart ... I was always under the spell of his glorious and inimitable tone which could make me forget my uneasiness about his too rapidly fleeting fingers and his exaggerated rubatos. There was always the irresistible sensuous charm, not unlike Kreisler's.[47]
Coupled to this tone was a vocal quality not unlike that attributed to Chopin's playing. With Rachmaninoff's extensive operatic experience, he was a great admirer of fine singing. As his records demonstrate, he possessed a tremendous ability to make a musical line sing, no matter how long the notes or how complex the supporting texture, with most of his interpretations taking on a narrative quality. With the stories he told at the keyboard came multiple voices—a polyphonic dialogue, not the least in terms of dynamics. His 1940 recording of his transcription of the song "Daisies" captures this quality extremely well. On the recording, separate musical strands enter as if from various human voices in eloquent conversation. This ability came from an exceptional independence of fingers and hands.[48]
Memory
Rachmaninoff also possessed an uncanny memory—one that would help put him in good stead when he had to learn the standard piano repertoire as a 45-year-old exile. He could hear a piece of music, even a symphony, then play it back the next day, the next year, or a decade after that. Siloti would give him a long and demanding piece to learn, such as Brahms' Variations and Fugue on a Theme by Handel. Two days later Rachmaninoff would play it "with complete artistic finish." Alexander Goldenweiser said, "Whatever composition was ever mentioned—piano, orchestral, operatic, or other—by a Classical or contemporary composer, if Rachmaninoff had at any time heard it, and most of all if he liked it, he played it as though it were a work he had studied thoroughly."[49]
Interpretations
Regardless of the music, Rachmaninoff always planned his performances carefully. He based his interpretations on the theory that each piece of music has a "culminating point." Regardless of where that point was or at which dynamic within that piece, the performer had to know how to approach it with absolute calculation and precision; otherwise, the whole construction of the piece could crumble and the piece could become disjointed. This was a practice he learned from Russian bass Feodor Chaliapin, a staunch friend.[39] Paradoxically, Rachmaninoff often sounded like he was improvising, though he actually was not. While his interpretations were mosaics of tiny details, when those mosaics came together in performance, they might, according to the tempo of the piece being played, fly past at great speed, giving the impression of instant thought.[50]
One advantage Rachmaninoff had in this building process over most of his contemporaries was in approaching the pieces he played from the perspective of a composer rather than that of an interpreter. He believed "interpretation demands something of the creative instinct. If you are a composer, you have an affinity with other composers. You can make contact with their imaginations, knowing something of their problems and their ideals. You can give their works color. That is the most important thing for me in my interpretations, color. So you make music live. Without color it is dead."[51] Nevertheless, Rachmaninoff also possessed a far better sense of structure than many of his contemporaries, such as Hofmann, or the majority of pianists from the previous generation, judging from their respective recordings.[48]
A recording which showcases Rachmaninoff's approach is the Liszt Second Polonaise, recorded in 1925. Percy Grainger, who had been influenced by the composer and Liszt specialist Ferruccio Busoni, had himself recorded the same piece a few years earlier. Rachmaninoff's performance is far more taut and concentrated than Grainger's. The Russian's drive and monumental conception bear a considerable difference to the Australian's more delicate perceptions. Grainger's textures are elaborate. Rachmaninoff shows the filigree as essential to the work's structure, not simply decorative.[52]
[edit]Marfan syndrome
Along with his musical gifts, Rachmaninoff possessed physical gifts that may have placed him in good stead as a pianist. These gifts included exceptional height and extremely large hands with a gigantic finger stretch. This and Rachmaninoff's slender frame, long limbs, narrow head, prominent ears, and thin nose suggest that he may have had Marfan syndrome, a hereditary disorder of the connective tissue. This syndrome would have accounted for several minor ailments he suffered all his life. These included back pain, arthritis, eye strain and bruising of the fingertips.Recordings
Phonograph
Many of Rachmaninoff's recordings are acknowledged classics...
Piano rolls
Rachmaninoff was also involved in various ways with music on piano rolls. Several manufacturers, and in particular the Aeolian Company, had published his compositions on perforated music rolls from about 1900 onwards.[56] His sister-in-law, Sofia Satina, remembered him at the family estate at Ivanovka, pedalling gleefully through a set of rolls of his Second Piano Concerto, apparently acquired from a German source,[57] most probably the Aeolian Company's Berlin subsidiary, the Choralion Company. Aeolian in London created a set of three rolls of this concerto in 1909, which remained in the catalogues of its various successors until the late 1970s.[58]
From 1919 he made 35 piano rolls (12 of which were his own compositions),[59] for the American Piano Company (Ampico)'s reproducing piano. According to the Ampico publicity department, he initially disbelieved that a roll of punched paper could provide an accurate record, so he was invited to listen to a proof copy of his first recording. After the performance, he was quoted as saying "Gentlemen — I, Sergei Rachmaninoff, have just heard myself play!" For demonstration purposes, he recorded the solo part of his Second Piano Concerto for Ampico, though only the second movement was used publicly and has survived. He continued to record until around 1929, though his last roll, the Chopin Scherzo in B-flat minor, was not published until October 1933.[60]

Sir John Barbirolli, CH (2 December 1899 – 29 July 1970) was a British conductor and cellist. Barbirolli was particularly associated with the Hallé Orchestra, Manchester, which he conducted for nearly three decades. He was also music director of the New York Philharmonic and the Houston Symphony, and conducted many other orchestras including the London Symphony Orchestra, the London Philharmonic Orchestra, the Berlin Philharmonic, and the Vienna Philharmonic. He was particularly associated with the music of English composers such as Edward Elgar and Ralph Vaughan Williams. He also developed a strong reputation as a conductor of the music of Gustav Mahler.

Early years 1899-1937
Giovanni Battista Barbirolli was a Londoner, from a musical family. His father and uncle were violinists in London theatre orchestras, notably the Leicester Square Empire, though they had also played at La Scala, Milan, under Arturo Toscanini. Thus the young John Barbirolli (as he became known) was destined to be a string player, a specialist in British music, and to have a love of Italian opera.
Barbirolli won a scholarship to study at Trinity College of Music, and later studied at the Royal Academy of Music where the Sir John Barbirolli Collection of photographs and memorabilia is now archived. As a young cellist he made some acoustic records, played in the London Symphony Orchestra (LSO), notably at the first performance of Edward Elgar's Cello Concerto, and was soon after the soloist in the second performance of the work. In the 1920s he turned to conducting and formed a chamber orchestra which recorded new works for the National Gramophonic Society, notably Elgar's Introduction and Allegro, which may have been responsible for His Master's Voice avoiding the work until after Elgar's death.
Between 1929 and 1933 he conducted opera at Covent Garden. From 1933 to 1936 he conducted the Scottish Orchestra in Glasgow.
Barbirolli became known for his ability to secure effective performances at short notice, and in the 1930s made many recordings with the LSO and London Philharmonic, accompanying concerti with leading soloists such as Fritz Kreisler, Jascha Heifetz and Arthur Rubinstein, most of which remain classics today.

Conductor of New York Philharmonic 1937-1942
In 1937 Barbirolli achieved a coup when he was invited to succeed Arturo Toscanini as conductor of the New York Philharmonic, a tremendously prestigious post. Although his five seasons there were a musical triumph, as surviving recordings show, he was under constant attack from the hostile New York press, notably the critic Olin Downes, who was a strong champion of Toscanini. Barbirolli also had to cope with rivalry from the newly-formed NBC Symphony Orchestra, also based in New York, which was conducted by Toscanini and paid higher salaries.

Work in later years 1942-1970
In 1942 Barbirolli was invited to renew his contract but to do so would have had to become a US citizen, which he was unwilling to do. At this point, an invitation to take up the post of chief conductor of the Hallé Orchestra transformed his career.
The increase in scope for concerts had prompted the Hallé to end the increasingly unsatisfactory arrangement of sharing half their players with the BBC, which had saved them in the slump years, and to engage a top-rank conductor. Only four of the shared players chose to join the Hallé, so when Barbirolli arrived he had to rebuild the orchestra in weeks, a task he fell to with enthusiasm. His "new Hallé" recorded symphonies by Arnold Bax and Vaughan Williams, made in wartime Manchester. There was also a series of highly-acclaimed stereo recordings released by Pye in the United Kingdom and by Vanguard Records and Angel Records in the United States.
Barbirolli conducted the orchestra for 25 years in many cities, including at the Cheltenham Festival, where he premiered many new works. He also conducted the BBC and other London orchestras in concert and on record, and towards the end of his life renewed his association with EMI, which produced a legacy of fine recorded performances, many of which have been available continuously.
His last two concerts were held in the St Nicholas Chapel, King's Lynn, as part of its 1970 Festival. Despite collapsing from ill-health during the Friday afternoon, he produced magnificent renderings of Elgar's Symphony No 1 and Sea Pictures. The last work he conducted was Beethoven's Symphony No 7 on the Saturday before his death.
Barbirolli is remembered as an interpreter of Elgar, Vaughan Williams and Mahler, as well as Schubert, Beethoven, Sibelius, Verdi and Puccini, and as a staunch supporter of new works by British composers, in which his advocacy rivaled those of conductors Sir Adrian Boult and Sir Henry Wood. Vaughan Williams bestowed the nickname "Glorious John" on Barbirolli as a sign of esteem. He was a mentor to the extraordinarily gifted cellist Jacqueline du Pré.
He was knighted in 1949 and made a Companion of Honour in 1969.

Family
His first marriage was to singer Marjorie Parry. His second marriage from 1939 to his death was to the British oboist Evelyn Rothwell, born 1911 at Wallingford, England, who became Lady Barbirolli. She died at the age of 97 in January 2008.

Notable premieres
•Benjamin Britten, Violin Concerto with Antonio Brosa as soloist, New York Philharmonic, Carnegie Hall, New York, 28 March 1940
•Britten, Sinfonia da Requiem, New York Philharmonic, Carnegie Hall, New York, 30 March 1941
•Ralph Vaughan Williams, Sinfonia antartica, Hallé Orchestra, Manchester, 1953
•Vaughan Williams, Symphony No. 8, 1956

Legacy
Barbirolli Square in Lower Mosley Street, Manchester, England is named in his honour, with a statue of him by Byron Howard (2000). The square includes the modern concert venue, the Bridgewater Hall.
The Barbirolli Hall is the main hall in St Clement Danes School in Chorleywood, formerly St Clement Danes Grammar School, of which Barbirolli was a student when it was located in Houghton Street, London. The Elgar Cello Concerto has since been performed twice in the hall by cellist John Brennan and St Clement Danes student Thomas Isherwood.
A commemorative blue plaque was placed on the wall of the Bloomsbury Park Hotel in Southampton Row, Holborn, London in May 1993 to mark Barbirolli’s birthplace.