In the year 1900, a German-born conductor named Fritz Scheel conducted 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.

These concerts were so successful that residents of Philadelphia decided the impressive ad-hoc symphony formed for the occasion should not disband, but become instead a permanent resident 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 classic recordings made by two of the orchestra’s famous maestros: Leopold Stokowski and Eugene Ormandy. Between them, these two gentlemen would give the U.S. and world premier performances of works by the then-modern European composers Mahler, Schoenberg, Berg and Bartok, as well as Americans like Varese, Barber, Copland, and Persichetti.

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.”