ANTONIA BRICO, born June 26, 1902, became the first woman to stand on the podium and lead the New York Philharmonic. A playlist conducted by John of live rock concerts awaits you on Crosscurrents, Monday June 26 at 800 AM. Listen live at www.KRNN.org, 102.7fm, or 103.1fm.
Antonia Brico, (born June 26, 1902, Rotterdam, Netherlands—died August 3, 1989, Denver, Colorado, U.S.), Dutch-born American conductor and pianist, the first woman to gain wide recognition and acceptance as a leader of world-class symphony orchestras.
In 1938, she became the first woman to stand on the podium and conduct the New York Philharmonic. And in 1948, she founded an orchestra in Colorado.
Antonia Brico, a conductor who led her own orchestras in New York in the 1930’s and who devoted her life to fighting prejudice against women in the orchestral world, died on Thursday after a long illness. She was 87 years old and had lived at the Bella Vita Towers, a nursing home in Denver, since 1988.
In 1930 she became the first woman to conduct the Berlin Philharmonic. Seven years later she became the first woman to conduct an opera performance by a major New York company when she led the New York Hippodrome Opera production of Humperdinck’s ”Hansel and Gretel.” And in 1938 she made her debut with the New York Philharmonic, becoming the first woman to conduct that orchestra.
She had mixed feelings about these distinctions, however. ”I do not call myself a woman conductor,” she said in interviews. ”I call myself a conductor who happens to be a woman.”
July 25, 1938, Brico conducted the New York Philharmonic — the first woman to do so. Ms. Brico, age 36, impressed the crowd at Lewisohn Stadium, the Philharmonic’s then outdoor summer venue in Upper Manhattan. She conducted works by Tchaikovsky, Liszt, Sibelius and two pieces you’ll hear September 30, 2016 in her honor — Beethoven’s Leonore Overture No. 3 and Wagner’s Overture to Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg.
SOURCE: New York Times; Colorado Public Radio; Britanica
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