Russian Symphony Orchestra Society

Russian Symphony Orchestra Society
Orchestra
Advertisement for the orchestra's first performance on January 7, 1904
Founded	1903 (1903)
Disbanded	1922
Location	New York City

The Russian Symphony Orchestra Society (also known simply as the Russian Symphony Orchestra) was founded in 1903 (1903) in New York City by Modest Altschuler, and functioned for fifteen years.

Oscar Levant described the orchestra as having constituted "a school for concertmasters"; among its members were Frederic Fradkin (concertmaster of the Boston Symphony), Maximilian Pilzer (concertmaster of the New York Philharmonic), Ilya Skolnik (concertmaster of the Detroit Symphony), and Louis Edlin (concertmaster of the National Orchestral Association). Film music conductors Nikolai Sokoloff, Nathaniel Shilkret and Nat Finston were also Russian Symphony Orchestra alumni, as was trumpeter Harry Glantz. The orchestra also formed the backbone of the New Music Society of America, founded in December 1905.

They performed the New York premieres of numerous pieces by Sergei Rachmaninoff, Igor Stravinsky and Alexander Scriabin, including Stravinsky's first symphony (the Symphony in E-flat) and The Firebird.

The orchestra's debut public performance was at Cooper Union Hall on January 7, 1904, and, according to Leonard Slatkin, featured works by Mikhail Glinka, Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky, Henryk Wieniawski, and the American premiere of Rachmaninoff's The Rock. However, the New York Times of January 3, 1904 lists the program as consisting of the Overture from Glinka's Ruslan and Lyudmila, a baritone aria from Borodin's Prince Igor, an intermezzo from Mikhail Ippolitov-Ivanov, a Russian dance by Eduard Nápravník and the symphonic suite Scheherazade by Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov; The Times of January 24 that same year mentions their second concert as including Wieniawski's Souvenir de Moscou and reviewing a later concert in the series mentions a performance of "'The Cliff' by Rachmaninoff," presumably the same piece as The Rock.