With Support from the Leon Levy Foundation, New York Philharmonic Opens the Toscanini Archives, Providing Digital Access for Maestro’s 150th Birthday
Open-source pioneer Alfresco Software announced today that the New York Philharmonic, in conjunction with Alfresco partner Technology Services Group (TSG), has now digitized materials from former Music Director Arturo Toscanini’s era, and made them publicly available, thanks to Alfresco Content Services — just in time for celebrations marking the legendary musician’s 150th birthday. The materials being released cover the Toscanini era (1925–1945) and encompass 1,300 folders of documents totaling approximately 70,000 pages of remarkable history, plus a dozen marked scores, and 200 related parts.
Now, anyone anywhere in the world is just a virtual click away from an unprecedented amount of archival material on Toscanini – “the Maestro.” For example, researchers wanting to know more about the 1930 tour of Europe, which established the Philharmonic as an elite international ensemble, will be able to access reviews, original scores with handwritten notes, logistical details, posters, and even clips of home movies featuring Toscanini that were shot on that tour.
1925-1945: The Toscanini Era is the fifth release from the New York Philharmonic Leon Levy Digital Archives – an enormous undertaking that demonstrates the ability of the Alfresco platform to scale to meet any size project and accommodate the unique needs of any organization. The digital archive already houses more than two million pages – including correspondence, operation files, marked scores, and more from the Philharmonic’s 175-year-history—all available around-the-clock.
The New York Philharmonic Leon Levy Digital Archives project was launched in February 2011, with Alfresco as provider of the digital asset management solution. In the first phase of the project, the Archives digitized 1.3 million pages of photographs and documents dating from 1943 to 1970. The current phase of the project, funded by the Leon Levy Foundation and the National Endowment for the Humanities, has focused on digitizing the remainder of the paper materials from 1842 to 1942...