Samuel Antek

Who was Samuel Antek?

Samuel Antek was a violinist in the NBC Symphony Orchestra under conductor Arturo Toscanini. 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.

Antek wrote a series of essays about Toscanini, describing the famed Italian 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; it was published posthumously by the Vanguard Press in 1963.

Antek died of a heart attack in 1958, one year after Toscanini's own death.