“Venerable Minnesota Orchestra conductor Stanislaw Skrowaczewski suffered a stroke Sunday and is recovering after surgery,” writes Rohan Preston in Wednesday’s (11/16) Star Tribune (Minneapolis, MN). “He is in stable condition. ‘The news is very upsetting to everyone in the orchestra family but everyone is channeling good thoughts,’ said orchestra spokeswoman Gwen Pappas. Skrowaczewski, 93, took the orchestra to new heights … during his 19-year tenure as music director. He has maintained an active work schedule despite increasing frailty and heart problems in 2008 that caused him to get a pacemaker. In October, he conducted the orchestra in two concerts featuring one of his favorite works, Anton Bruckner’s Eighth Symphony. This coming weekend he was scheduled to lead the Dallas Symphony in a program of Mozart and Brahms.” Ruth Reinhardt, assistant conductor of the Dallas Symphony Orchestra, has stepped in as substitute conductor. “Skrowaczewski first made a splash in the United States when he conducted the Cleveland Orchestra in 1958. Two years later, he was hired by what was then the Minneapolis Symphony. He stayed at the orchestra’s helm until 1979, when he took the honorary title of conductor laureate.”
Posted November 18, 2016
