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32-419: The Doric-colonnaded amphitheater was built between Amsterdam and Convent Avenues, from 136th to 138th Streets. Financier and philanthropist Adolph Lewisohn donated the money for construction. It opened in 1915, with a seating capacity of 8,000. The stadium hosted many athletic, musical, and theatrical events. It was one of New York's public landmarks. Lewisohn Stadium was demolished in 1973 to make way for

64-604: A blackjack by a white police officer in South Carolina earlier that year. The sold-out concert, organized by the New York Amsterdam News as the atrocity was gaining national attention, included performances by musicians Nat King Cole , Cab Calloway , Duke Ellington , Carol Brice , Woody Guthrie , and Billie Holiday . Orson Welles , who had helped to publicize the cruel attack on his radio program and in his New York Post column, also attended, and

96-609: A "lung condition – immediately". Three months prior, in May, he allegedly told Anthony Harris, a pianist from Sacramento who he had dinner with, that he was suffering from cancer and that the doctors had given him two years to live. From August to October 1953, Kapell toured Australia, playing 37 concerts in 14 weeks. He appeared in Sydney, Brisbane, Melbourne, Bendigo , Shepparton , Albury , Horsham and finally in Geelong . Kapell played

128-641: A scene with Tony Roberts and Al Pacino . Stern, Jonathan. Music for the American People: The Lewisohn Stadium Concerts . Hillsdale: Pendragon Press, 2019. 40°49′09″N 73°57′04″W  /  40.819105°N 73.95119°W  / 40.819105; -73.95119  ( Lewisohn Stadium ) Tenth Avenue (Manhattan) Too Many Requests If you report this error to the Wikimedia System Administrators, please include

160-477: A series of open-air summer concerts at the stadium for three decades during the 1940s, 1950s and 1960s, many conducted by . His Italian Night concerts often attracted an audience of over 13,000 guests for a single performance and featured noted soloists from the operatic stage including Licia Albanese and Richard Tucker . Both Leonard Bernstein of the New York Philharmonic and Kurt Adler of

192-624: A series of recordings for Everest with the "Stadium Symphony Orchestra of New York." George Gershwin played his Rhapsody in Blue , and premiered his Cuban Overture at the stadium as well. Due to declining attendances, the regularly scheduled concerts were discontinued in 1966. The stadium was used by City College for its commencement exercises. All CCNY campuses took part, including Liberal Arts, Engineering and Architecture, and its Manhattan Business School (now Baruch College ). This practice continued through June 1973. (Graduation ceremonies for

224-817: The Copland Piano Sonata. The set sold well throughout the world and brought Kapell's work to a new audience. VAI 1027 contains broadcast recordings of the Rachmaninoff Piano Concerto No. 3 and the Khatchaturian Piano Concerto. Arbiter 108 features part of the Beethoven Piano Concerto No. 3 and the Shostakovich Concerto No. 1, and it includes Mussorgsky 's Pictures at an Exhibition , which also appears in

256-722: The Juilliard School . Kapell won his first competition at the age of ten and received as a prize a turkey dinner with the pianist José Iturbi . In 1941, he won the Philadelphia Orchestra 's youth competition as well as the Naumburg Award. The following year, the Walter W. Naumburg Foundation sponsored the 19-year-old pianist's New York début, a recital which won him the Town Hall Award for

288-999: The Metropolitan Opera also made appearances at the stadium as conductors. Guest appearances were also made at the stadium's podium by: Pierre Boulez , Andre Kostelanetz , Henry Lewis . Dimitri Mitropoulos , Julius Rudel , Alexander Smallens , Max Steiner , Alfred Wallenstein , and Mark Warnow . Over the decades, a wide variety of noted soloists also appeared at the amphitheater including: Marian Anderson , Louis Armstrong , Harry Belafonte , Jack Benny , Leonard Bernstein , Jorge Bolet , Van Cliburn , Placido Domingo , Joan Field , Ella Fitzgerald , Kirsten Flagstad , Benny Goodman , Thomas Hayward , Jascha Heifetz , William Kapell , Lotte Lenya , Yehudi Menuhin , Jan Peerce , Roberta Peters , Leontyne Price , Paul Robeson ,. Pete Seeger , Frank Sinatra , Renata Tebaldi , Richard Tucker and Yma Sumac The orchestra conductors Eugene Ormandy and Leopold Stokowski each made

320-888: The RCA Victrola label in 1970. For decades, pirated copies of the Kapell's commercial RCA Victor recordings and unlicensed recordings of "live" performances circulated among collectors. In the 1980s, RCA Victor issued two compact discs of Kapell's recordings, including the Khatchaturian and Prokofiev Third Piano Concertos, and an all- Chopin disc. A 9 CD set released by RCA Victor in 1998 contains Kapell's complete authorized recordings, including renditions of Chopin's mazurkas and sonatas as well as concertos by Rachmaninoff , Prokofiev, and Khatchaturian . It also has many lesser-known items, some of them first releases, including Shostakovich preludes , Scarlatti sonatas, and

352-463: The $ 125 million North Academic Center. In 1985, a plaza outside the center was rededicated as the Lewisohn Plaza, in memory of the stadium and its philanthropist. The CCNY football team played its home games at Lewisohn from 1921 to 1950. The final game played was a 33–6 Beavers victory over Lowell Textile on November 18, 1950, in front of 300 fans. (It was CCNY's only win that season, and

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384-662: The Mount Ararat Cemetery near Farmingdale, New York . Musician Isaac Stern set up the William Kapell Memorial Fund to bring musicians to the United States for wider experience. The Australian violinist Ernest Llewellyn , a friend of Stern's, was the inaugural recipient in 1955. Pianists including Eugene Istomin , Gary Graffman , Leon Fleisher and Van Cliburn have acknowledged Kapell's influence. Fleisher stated that Kapell

416-664: The RCA Victor set, as well as on VAI 1048, the last from an Australian recital of July 21, 1953. In 2004, a number of broadcast recordings made during William Kapell's last Australian tour were returned to his family. RCA Victor issued these recordings in 2008 under the title Kapell Rediscovered . Included are several previously unknown performances of " God Save the Queen ", Debussy's Suite bergamasque , Chopin's Barcarolle , Op. 60, and Scherzo No. 1 in B minor , Op. 20, and Prokofiev's Sonata No. 7, Op. 83 . In 2013, RCA issued

448-578: The admission price of merely twenty five cents, concertgoers at the amphitheater were treated to appearances by leading performers from the world of Jazz, Classical music and Opera. Several noted conductors appeared at the stadium in concert with the Lewisohn Stadium Symphony Orchestra, the New York Philharmonic and the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra. Kurt Adler and Alfredo Antonini conducted

480-579: The class of 1969 were held at the Felt Forum of Madison Square Garden .) It was also used for CCNY's annual Army ROTC 's reviews at the end of each academic year. On August 16, 1946, the stadium was the site of a benefit concert for Sergeant Isaac Woodard , an African-American soldier in the U.S. Army who, upon being honorably discharged and returning home from service in the Pacific theater of World War II, had been brutally attacked and blinded with

512-459: The details below. Request from 172.68.168.237 via cp1104 cp1104, Varnish XID 204783458 Upstream caches: cp1104 int Error: 429, Too Many Requests at Thu, 28 Nov 2024 07:39:38 GMT William Kapell Oscar William Kapell (September 20, 1922 – October 29, 1953) was an American classical pianist. The Washington Post described him as "America's first great pianist", while The New York Times described him as "one of

544-577: The eastside neighborhood of Yorkville, Manhattan , where his parents owned a Lexington Avenue bookstore. His father was of Spanish-Russian Jewish ancestry and his mother of Polish descent. Dorothea Anderson La Follette (the wife of Chester La Follette ) met Kapell at the Third Street Music School and became his teacher, giving him lessons several times a week at her studio on West 64th Street. Kapell later studied with Olga Samaroff , former wife of conductor Leopold Stokowski , at

576-414: The event was co-chaired by boxer Joe Louis and New York City Mayor William O'Dwyer . The stadium appeared as the setting of the final scene of the 1945 film Rhapsody in Blue in which Oscar Levant performs the title composition, with an orchestra conducted by Paul Whiteman , as a memorial to the composer. The derelict stadium was also used in the 1973 film Serpico , directed by Sidney Lumet , in

608-468: The final concert of his Australian tour in Geelong, Victoria, on October 22, 1953, a recital which included a performance of Chopin 's "Funeral March" Sonata . Days after the concert, he set off on his return flight to the United States, telling reporters at Mascot Airport he would never return to Australia because of the harsh comments from some Australian critics. He was aboard BCPA Flight 304 when on

640-641: The last century's great geniuses of the keyboard" and Times critic and pianist Michael Kimmelman , writing in The New York Review of Books , remarked: "Was there any greater American pianist born during the last century than Kapell? Perhaps not." In 1953, at age 31, Kapell died in the crash of BCPA Flight 304 while returning from a concert tour in Australia. William Kapell was born in New York City on September 20, 1922, and grew up in

672-616: The morning of October 29, 1953, the plane, descending to land in fog, struck the treetops and crashed on Kings Mountain , south of the San Francisco airport. Everyone on board died. His friend, broadcaster Alistair Cooke , covered Kapell's death in his Letter from America on October 30, 1953. On November 2, Kapell's funeral took place at the Stephen Wise Free Synagogue in New York; interment followed at

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704-412: The program was discontinued the following year.) Along with Jasper Oval (right across Convent Avenue, also now demolished), Lewisohn was used throughout the academic year for many of the college's uptown campus outdoor intramural sports. The CCNY Varsity Rifle Team had its indoor, 50' small bore range under the stadium steps, entered through a doorway at the north end. The coach, Jerrold Uretsky (Jerry),

736-423: The team dissolved within 3 years of the loss of Lewisohn. The range was notoriously loud, with a steel backstop and concrete walls, and no acoustic insulation. In addition to hosting sporting events, the stadium was used for musical performances for nearly five decades starting in 1918 under the supervision of Minnie Guggenheimer, who attended the stadium's inaugural concert with her son Randolph Guggenheimer . For

768-641: The university's Clarice Smith Performing Arts Center . In 1944, Kapell signed an exclusive recording contract with RCA Victor . Many of his recordings were originally issued as 78RPM records. Some were issued on LP , but by 1960, all of Kapell's commercial recordings were out of print. In 1962, RCA Victor reissued the Kapell/Koussevitzky recording of the Khachaturian Piano Concerto. Beethoven 's Piano Concerto No. 2 and Prokofiev 's Piano Concerto No. 3 were reissued on

800-496: The work that he was referred to in some circles as "Khachaturian Kapell." Besides his pianism and technical gifts, Kapell's attractive appearance and mop of black hair helped make him a favorite with the public. By the late 1940s, Kapell had toured the United States, Canada, Europe and Australia to acclaim and praised as the most brilliant and audacious of his generation of young American pianists. On May 18, 1948, he married Rebecca Anna Lou Melson , with whom he had two children. She

832-570: The year's outstanding concert by a musician under 30. He was signed to an exclusive recording contract with RCA Victor . Kapell achieved fame while in his early twenties, in part as a result of his performances of Aram Khachaturian 's Piano Concerto in D-flat . His 1946 world premiere recording of the piece with Serge Koussevitzky and the Boston Symphony Orchestra was a sell-out hit. Eventually, he became so associated with

864-477: Was "the greatest pianistic talent that this country has ever produced". Kapell's widow, Anna Lou Dehavenon (1926–2012), undertook a career as an expert on homelessness in New York in part as a result, she said, of her own experience of suddenly becoming a single mother with no income. For the rest of her life she worked to keep her late husband's recordings before the public. Kapell's estate sued BCPA , Qantas (which had taken over BCPA in 1954), and BOAC (which

896-502: Was a pianist herself, having been a student of Sergei Tarnowsky , the teacher of Vladimir Horowitz . Early on, there was a tendency to typecast Kapell as a performer of technically difficult repertoire. While his technique was exceptional, he was a versatile musician, and was impatient with what he considered shallow or sloppy music making. His own repertoire was diverse, encompassing works from J. S. Bach to Aaron Copland , who so admired Kapell's performances of his Piano Sonata that he

928-567: Was alleged to have sold Kapell the ticket). In 1964, more than ten years after the crash, Kapell's widow and two children were awarded US$ 924,396 in damages. The award was overturned on appeal in 1965. In 1986, the University of Maryland 's piano competition was renamed the William Kapell International Piano Competition in Kapell's honor. It became quadrennial in 1998 and is currently held at

960-586: Was an accomplished expert marksman with numerous medals and championships. For many years, the CCNY Rifle Team excelled in national, regional and local competition and was consistently in the NRA-sponsored Top Ten national ranking, with the best record of any team at CCNY. They traveled around the U.S. to compete against different collegiate teams as well as against Army and Navy which were the only teams they could never beat. Unfortunately,

992-541: Was diagonally across the street from the Kapells' apartment) for lessons, but they demurred. Horowitz later commented that there was nothing he could have taught Kapell. Kapell suffered from asthma and rheumatic fever during his life. In 1952, Kapell reportedly suffered from a serious lung condition. He was diagnosed with bronchitis in April and a doctor advised him to stop playing. In August, he wrote in his diary to tend to

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1024-428: Was writing a new work for him at the time of the pianist's death. Kapell practiced up to eight hours a day, keeping track of his sessions with a notebook and clock. He also set aside time from his busy concert schedule to work with the musicians he most admired, including Artur Schnabel , Pablo Casals , and Rudolf Serkin . Kapell also approached Arthur Rubinstein and Vladimir Horowitz (whose East 94th Street townhouse

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