In the year 1900, a German-born conductor named Fritz Scheel arranged for two orchestral programs in Philadelphia billed as the “Philippines Concerts.” These were benefits, as contemporary ads put it: “for the relief of families of the nation’s heroes killed in the Philippines.” The previous year U.S. troops had fought a guerrilla army in the Philippines and had suffered heavy casualties.  

The concerts proved so successful that Philadelphians decided that Scheel’s pick-up orchestra should become instead a permanent ensemble, similar to the orchestras of New York and Boston. And so, on today’s date in 1900, the first official concert of the Philadelphia Orchestra took place at the Academy of Music, offering a program of Goldmark, Beethoven, Tchaikovsky, Weber, and Wagner.

During the century that followed, the fame of the Philadelphia Orchestra spread worldwide via recordings made by the orchestra’s famous maestros Leopold Stokowski and Eugene Ormandy,  who gave many U.S. and world premiere performances of new works by both European and American composers.

In 1940, the Russian composer Sergei Rachmaninoff, on the occasion of the premiere of his “Symphonic Dances” by the Philadelphians, paid the orchestra this compliment: “Today, when I think of composing, my thoughts turn to you, the greatest orchestra in the world.”

Richard Wagner (1813 – 1883) — Act I Prelude, from Die Meistersinger (Philadelphia Orchestra; Eugene Ormandy, cond.) CBS 38914

Sergei Rachmaninoff (1873 – 1943) — Symphonic Dances (Philadelphia Orchestra; Charles Dutoit, cond.) London 433 181