Elkan Naumburg

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Elkan Naumburg (1835-1924) was a New York City merchant, banker, philanthropist and musicologist, best remembered for his sponsorship of the arts in Manhattan. From the last quarter of the nineteenth century, he used his wealth to promote public interest in symphonic and "semi-classical" music by founding the Oratorio Society of New York and funding construction of the Naumburg Bandshell, on the Concert Ground of Central Park which honors his name. (The New York Times, February 19, 1989)

Naumburg was born in Treuchtlingen, Bavaria in 1835, and emigrated to the United States at age 15. He settled first in Baltimore, where he took a liking to chamber music. An amateur pianist with no formal training, he was unable at that time to afford purchasing concert tickets for famous performers like Vieuxtemps and Thalberg. When he later became a successful merchant and then a merchant banker, he founded E. Naumburg & Co. - one of the largest 'commercial paper' banks on Wall Street. With this success he chose to make access to fine music, available to a broader public in New York, as one of his principal legacies.

In 1866, at age 31, he moved to New York City, where he took up banking. The parlor of his Manhattan townhouse hosted pianists, opera singers and string quartets, and soon became a forum for celebrities of the music field. In 1873, Naumburg founded a group of supporters and lovers of classical music, named the Oratorio Society by his wife, Bertha. Richard Arnold, Leopold Damrosch, Marcella Sembrich, Theodore Thomas and others performed weekly in the Naumburg family parlor during the 1870s, 80s and 90s, entertaining such Gilded Age critics and artists as Henry Theophilus Finck and Albert Henry Krehbiel.

In 1890, Elkan Naumburg founded the New York Philharmonic's first pension fund, and later helped introduce renowned conductors like Vasily Ilyich Safonov and Willem Mengelberg to that orchestra. He soon got the idea of presenting free symphonic concerts in Central Park.

Patterned after concerts conducted by Theodore Thomas in Central Park Garden, the Naumburg Concerts commenced in 1905, and have continued without interruption ever since, almost always in Central Park. Originally performed in the Central Park Mall in an octagonal, pagoda-shaped bandstand designed by Jacob Wrey Mould, the programs featured popular waltzes, abbreviated operas, one or two movements of a symphony, or short arias, performed for audiences of strolling or picnicking Manhattanites, many of whom took to dancing as dusk fell and the gas lights came on.

In 1912, the old wood and cast iron bandstand was deemed inadequate, so Naumburg offered the city $100,000 to build a new bandshell of Indiana limestone. His nephew, architect William G. Tachau, designed the structure -- an innovative half-sphere which later came into frequent use -- in 1916. Building began in 1921, and it opened on September 29th, 1923, with a 60-piece orchestra playing selections from "Aida" and "Carmen", the William Tell Overture, the Blue Danube Waltz, and movements from Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony and Tchaikovsky's 1812 Overture. The concert closed with a new march, "On the Mall," by Edwin Franko Goldman, dedicated to 88-year-old Elkan Naumburg, who was in attendance.

Elkan Naumburg died the next year, in 1924, but his sons Walter W. and George W. continued the free concerts in Central Park. Walter W. Naumburg endowed the concerts in 1959, through a provision in his will (See the Naumburg Orchestral Concerts History [www.naumbuburgconcerts.org]). Walter Naumburg also continued the family tradition of supporting classical music by establishing the Walter W. Naumburg Prize in 1926, and when he died in 1959, his will provided for the perpetuation of both the free Naumburg Orchestral Concerts in Central Park and the Prize. Elkan's grand-niece, Eleanor Naumburg Sanger, later co-founded WQXR, New York's classical music radio station, and Elkan's grandson Philip H. Naumburg helped found the Santa Fe Chamber Music Festival.