Furtwaengler

The cellists of the New York Philharmonic Orchestra sat and smiled. An angular gentleman in an ill-fitting dress suit, Wilhelm Furtwangler by name, who had just completed his farewell concert as guest conductor, was asking them to get up, to bow as he himself was bowing in gracious acknowledgment of the battering applause that assaulted his ears. But the cellists smiled at him; they beat with their right hands upon the claret-colored wood of their big fiddles to show that they, too, admired as much as the assembly which now, through the clapping, had begun to shout his name.

"Gad, they don't often shout!" Clarence H. Mackay, Chairman of the Philharmonic Board, stood, carnation in buttonhole, bending a benign, florid face upon the inclining Furtwangler. He had just heard him conduct Strauss's Death and Transfiguration, Beethoven's Fifth Symphony, with dignity and power. This Furtwangler well understands Beethoven, presents, in fact, something of an intellectual likeness to him. He has vigor, directness, a scorn of sham that amounts some- times to a scorn of subtlety, and a kind of majesty even--the majesty of the unconcerned. Perhaps that is why the cellists slapped their instruments, Mr. Mackay beamed, the house roared, Furtwaengler marched 16 times between the conductor's dais and the wings and could not leave until he had made a speech which consisted of a bow, a gesture, and three inaudible words. He left forthwith for Germany. ART