Samuel Antek (May 1, 1909 – January 27, 1958) was a violinist in the

NBC Symphony Orchestra The NBC Symphony Orchestra was a radio orchestra conceived by David Sarnoff, the president of the Radio Corporation of America, especially for the conductor Arturo Toscanini. The NBC Symphony performed weekly radio concert broadcasts with Tosca ...

under conductor

Arturo Toscanini Arturo Toscanini (; ; March 25, 1867January 16, 1957) was an Italian conductor. He was one of the most acclaimed and influential musicians of the late 19th and early 20th century, renowned for his intensity, his perfectionism, his ear for orch ...

. He joined at the orchestra's inception in 1937 and played with it until its dissolution in 1954. Antek was also a conductor and served as music director for the New Jersey Symphony Orchestra from 1947 to 1958. After leaving the NBC Symphony, he served as assistant conductor with the Chicago Symphony under Fritz Reiner. Antek's untimely death led Reiner to appoint Walter Hendl, then music director of the Dallas Symphony, to this position. Antek wrote a series of essays about Toscanini, describing the famed

Italian Italian(s) may refer to: * Anything of, from, or related to the people of Italy over the centuries ** Italians, an ethnic group or simply a citizen of the Italian Republic or Italian Kingdom ** Italian language, a Romance language *** Regional Ita ...

conductor from the point of view of an orchestral musician. They were collected in a book entitled ''This Was Toscanini'', accompanied by renowned photographs of Toscanini by

Robert Hupka Robert Hupka (August 26, 1919 – July 3, 2001) was a recording engineer for RCA Victor and later for Columbia Records and, until his retirement, a cameraman for CBS Television in New York. He was born in Vienna, and emigrated to the U.S. at th ...

; it was published posthumously by the

Vanguard Press The Vanguard Press (1926–1988) was a United States publishing house established with a $100,000 grant from the left wing American Fund for Public Service, better known as the Garland Fund. Throughout the 1920s, Vanguard Press issued an array of ...

in 1963."Robert Hupka, 81, Toscanini Photographer"
''

The New York Times ''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid ...

'', July 7, 2001 An earlier piece about Toscanini by Antek, "Playing with the Maestro", appeared in Saturday Review magazine in the early 1950s. Antek died of a heart attack in 1958 at the age of 48, one year after Toscanini's own death

References

External links

Samuel Antek papers, 1905-1975
Music Division, New York Public Library for the Performing Arts. 1958 deaths 1909 births 20th-century violinists {{Violinist-stub