Out-of-Doors

It has long been something of an axiom among musicians that for outdoor concerts the band is the thing. It has been thought that the weaker voice of the orchestra, with its soft strings and woodwind, was lost in an open space. This idea is changing. The cause of the change is to be found in the improvement in sounding boards. An orchestra playing in front of and partly under a great, cavern-like sound deflector contrives to project its tone to the audience quite acceptably.

Outdoor symphony concerts in New York's Stadium have been a summer feature for several years. They are announced in increasing elaboration for the coming warm months. The Stadium concerts have demonstrated the merits of the improved sounding boards. In the front seats, perhaps in the front half of the audience, the volume orchestral tone comes in about the same ringing fullness that you get in a concert hall. In the first several rows you do not get the deafening ill-balance that you get in a similar position in an auditorium. The distant rumbling of street cars and elevated trains and the honking of automobile horns in the middle of quiet passages give interruptions that are not essentially unpleasant, but which raise a characteristic mood for the outdoor performance.

In the back seats, say those as far from the orchestra as are the final rows in a concert hall, much of the nuance of the orchestra is lost. The pianissimi are apt to be inaudible. For this reason the best programs for outdoor performance are vigorous ones, with heavy masses of tone and brazen climaxes. Tschaikowsky is ideal.