Josef Stránský

Some commentators did not see Stránský as a worthy successor to Mahler: the periodical Musical America wrote: After much upheaval, search and negotiation, the New York Philharmonic Society ... has engaged Josef Stransky...

Without disrespect to Mr. Stransky, there are reasons which cause this circumstance to remind one of Aesop's fable of the mountain in labor which finally brought forth a mouse[4]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.

[5] 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".

Nor was Stránský averse to "contemporary" music: he played Respighi, Sibelius, and even his immediate Philharmonic predecessor Mahler, and conducted the American premiere of Schoenberg's Pelleas und Melisande.

Before his death, Stránský amassed a private art collection that included more than 50 major impressionist and post-impressionist paintings by Picasso, Van Gogh, Gauguin, Renoir, Monet, Manet, Degas, Cézanne, Matisse, Seurat, Toulouse-Lautrec, Pissarro, Sisley, Delacroix, Ingres, Corot, Courbet, Daumier, Derain, Boudin, Modigliani, Segonzac, Fantin-Latour, Vuillard, Utrillo, Vlaminck, Guys, Laurencin, Rouault, Gromaire, and others.