In the 1947 film, Carnegie Hall, in which he conducted the slow movement ot Tchaikowsy's fifth symphony. [Photo courtesy of the International Stokowski Society]

The 1940s proved to be an unsettling time for Stokowski and he drifted from one project and podium to another, founding the New York City and Hollywood Bowl Symphony Orchestras and later becoming a Chief Guest Conductor with the New York Philharmonic. From 1951 he began a new career abroad, making frequent guest appearances with the world's finest orchestras. From 1955-61, he was Music Director of the Houston Symphony Orchestra, and in 1962 founded the American Symphony Orchestra in New York. However, it was not until 1963 that he made his debut at the Promenade Concerts in London - the first 'international' conductor to do so - where his concerts included a memorable Proms première of Mahler's Resurrection Symphony.

Showman or charlatan aside, Stokowski's almost evangelical zeal for music cannot be ignored, one that went further than the merely proselytising. The exiled and poverty-stricken Igor Stravinsky received three cheques, each for $1,000 from Stokowski, purportedly acting on behalf of an anonymous donor, but coming directly from his own pocket. When Andrej Paufnik fled Poland, Stokowski offered to arrange his passage to America; although Paufnik in fact declined Stokowski's invitation, the conductor still arranged numerous performances of his music.

'There is good music and bad music, not old music or new music' was a phrase of which he was fond - when he died in 1977, he had helped foster new attitudes to contemporary music, rekindled interest in old masters and helped break down some of the barriers that lovers of art music build around themselves. He spent his last few years in the land of his birth, and was buried in the cemetery of the Marylebone parish in London.