Josef Stránský (September 9, 1872 – March 6, 1936) was a Czech conductor, composer, and art collector/dealer who moved to the United States and conducted the New York Philharmonic from 1911 to 1923. Biography He was born on September 9, 1872, in Humpolec in Bohemia. He worked as a conductor in Prague and Berlin before being selected by the New York Philharmonic to replace Gustav Mahler on Mahler's death in 1911. Some commentators did not see Stránský as a worthy successor to Mahler: the periodical Musical America wrote: An article in The New York Times about the appointment began: "The financial backers of the New York Philharmonic Orchestra will be interested to learn that the German artistic world is filled with astonishment over the engagement of Josef Stransky of Berlin as the successor to the late Gustav Mahler", before going on to allege that Stránský was chosen over other candidates such as Oskar Fried and Bruno Walter because of his low financial demands. Becoming the Philharmonic's music director at age 39, Stránský was the youngest conductor to assume the post since Carl Bergmann over a half-century earlier. He married Marie Doxrud (1881–1954), a soprano from Norway, in 1912. During his tenure with the Philharmonic, Stránský received praise for his interpretations of Franz Liszt and Richard Strauss by the prominent critic Henry T. Finck of the New York Evening Post. However, Daniel Gregory Mason expressed his dissatisfaction with what he referred to as "the Wagnerian, Lisztian and Tschaikowskian pap ladled out to us by ... Stransky of the Phihamonic Society", and went as far as to call the conductor "a total musical incompetent". In an even more biting critique published in H. L. Mencken's American Mercury Magazine, critic D. W. Sinclair wrote Mahler scholar Henry-Louis de La Grange has characterized Stránský as a "conscientious but uninspiring" leader, who allowed the high performing levels achieved by Mahler to fall. Despite these criticisms leveled at him, in fact Stránský accomplished a great deal with the Philharmonic. He had the widest repertoire of any of the Philharmonic's previous conductors, and during the First World War, his programs shifted subtly to favor English, Russian, and French composers. Stránský also included more Americans than all of his predecessors combined, programming George Chadwick, Arthur Foote, Edward MacDowell, John Knowles Paine, and John Philip Sousa. Nor was Stránský averse to "contemporary" music: he played Respighi, Sibelius, and even