Returning East we note the orchestra of the Peabody Institute in Baltimore and the symphony orchestras of Atlanta, Washington, New Haven, and Buffalo. These are all relatively modest organizations, but they supplement excellently the work of the large visiting orchestras. Philadelphia, however, possesses an orchestra which has now definitely taken its place among the greatest in the country. It is the outgrowth of about fifty amateur and semi-professional musicians who, between 1893 and 1900, gave a few concerts each season at the Academy of Music under the leadership of Dr. W. W. Gilchrist. These men formed the nucleus of a permanent orchestra of seventy-two players, which was organized in 1900. Fritz Scheel, then conducting an orchestra at one of Philadelphia's summer parks, was appointed conductor. Under him the important formative work was solidly accomplished and when Carl Pohlig, first court conductor at Stuttgart, came over as conductor in 1907 he found at his disposal a finished ensemble. Pohlig was succeeded by Leopold Stokowski in 1912. The latter's knowledge of American traditions and artistic needs, gained at first while conductor of the Cincinnati orchestra, served to put him in sympathy with the musical desires and ideals of his public and the success of the orchestra under his leadership has been very marked. Besides its regular season of fifty-one concerts (season of 1913-14) the Philadelphia orchestra gives a number of popular concerts, fills many engagements in nearby towns and cities, and makes two tours of a week each in the Middle West and New England. 'Believing that a great orchestral organization should have an educational influence'--we quote from the prospectus of the Philadelphia orchestra--'he (Mr. Stokowski) chooses the compositions to be played from all periods and all schools and arranges his programs in the manner which he considers most likely to prove both pleasure-giving and enlightening. The list of programs for the past season (1913-14) included two devoted wholly to Wagner, one of which was made up of excerpts from the four operas of the "Ring," presented in their natural sequence. From Bach to Richard Strauss, from Gluck to Erich Korngold--the repertory, though kept always up to his high standard, is inclusive and comprehensive. It touches upon all fields of music, faltering before no technical requirements--there is nothing in the most modern range of the most complicated orchestral works that the orchestra has not at one time or another essayed, one of its achievements being the entirely successful performance of Richard Strauss's tremendous _Sinfonia Domestica_.'