Detroit Symphony Orchestra

Detroit Symphony Orchestra (DSO)
Orchestra
Orchestra Hall at the Max M. Fisher Music Center
Founded	1887
Concert hall	Orchestra Hall at the Max M. Fisher Music Center
Principal conductor	Leonard Slatkin
Website	www.dso.org

The Detroit Symphony Orchestra (DSO) is an American orchestra based in Detroit, Michigan. Its main performance center is Orchestra Hall at the Max M. Fisher Music Center in Detroit's Midtown neighborhood. The DSO performs throughout the metro Detroit area in both paid neighborhood series concerts and free community concerts. The DSO can also be seen and heard live on the web at dso.org/live.

The DSO performed the first concert of its first subscription season at 8:00 p.m. on Monday, Dec. 19, 1887 at the Detroit Opera House. The conductor was Rudolph Speil. He was succeeded in subsequent seasons by a variety of conductors until 1900 when Hugo Kalsow was appointed and served until the orchestra ceased operations in 1910. The Detroit Symphony resumed operations in 1914 when ten Detroit society women each contributed $100 to the organization and pledged to find 100 additional subscribers. They soon hired a music director, Weston Gales, a 27-year-old church organist from Boston, who led the first performance of the reconstituted orchestra on February 26, 1914, again at the old Detroit Opera House.

The appointment of the Russian pianist Ossip Gabrilowitsch as music director in 1918 brought instant status to the new orchestra. A friend of composers Gustav Mahler and Sergei Rachmaninoff, Gabrilowitsch demanded a new auditorium be built as a condition of his accepting the position. Orchestra Hall was completed for the new music director in 1919 in four months and twenty-three days. Under Gabrilowitsch, the Detroit Symphony Orchestra quickly became one of the most prominent orchestras in the country, performing with the leading artists of the day. In 1922, the orchestra gave the world's first radio broadcast of a symphony orchestra concert with Gabrilowitsch conducting and guest artist Artur Schnabel at the piano. From 1934 to 1942, the orchestra performed for millions across the country as the official orchestra of The Ford Sunday Evening Hour (later the Ford Symphony Hour) national radio show.