Orchestras

In Manhattan last week; on the stage of Carnegie Hall, Conductor Walter Damrosch lifted his baton high for the first New York Symphony concert of the season. Mozart had the honor of beginning, with his energetic Symphony in D, cooked to order at his father's command to tickle the palate of a Salzburg burgomaster. Schumann was next with his Concerto in A Minor, with Pianist Alfred Cortot to spin the important thread cunningly. Then came a stranger, Jacques Ibert, with three pieces from his ballet suite, Les Rencontres, given its U. S. premiere a fortnight ago by the Boston Symphony. In conflicting keys, restless violins traced his vagaries of flower girls and Creoles in the Debussy manner, gossiping women, fishwives taken rag and bone from Stravinsky. Critics damned it, called it dull, found the Mozart and the Schumann a little tiresome too. They blamed the first on the breathless pat-a-pat reading of Conductor Damrosch, the second on the frigid finger tips of Pianist Cortot. All praise went to two Debussy Nocturnes that came after intermission: Clouds moving slowly, solemnly, now white, now grey, now reflecting the pale splendor of a dying sun; Festivals with its wise laughter, frail and unearthly--and to the Meistersinger Overture that blew its virtues boldly into the darkest crannies of the hall and drew forth an ovation for the orchestra and its leader.

At its second pair of concerts the New York Philharmonic gave the first U. S. performance of George Templeton Strong's* Vie d'Artiste, a symphonic poem for violin and orchestra. Josef Szigeti was the soloist, drew ripe measure of grave, cool beauty to paint the mood of a creator, peaceful as a flower at first, but bruised and beaten by a mocking Success back into a wiser contentment. Critics found it pleasant, a little sentimental. They commended Conductor Willem Mengelberg for introducing it, and for giving Bloch's Israel Symphony, that strong, honest portrayal of the suffering of the Jews, bright with savagery, sensual, despairing.

In Minneapolis, symphonophiles drew a mighty breath of relief. They had received some weeks ago a statement from the Symphony management to the effect that unless they gave better support, in fact unless they took all the subscriptions to the 16 Friday evening concerts, their fare would be cut in half and they would get no Sunday afternoon programs. They bestirred themselves. At the opening concert every seat was taken and a hundred extra ones tucked here and there for those who would not be turned away. They relaxed then those symphonophiles, gave rapt attention to Rimsky-Korsakoff, Thomas, Mozart, Pierne, Delibes, Wagner, capably read by Conductor Henri Verbrugghen.

In San Francisco, the Symphony there broadcast for the first time. It was an experiment, Conductor Alfred Hertz had announced; he demanded a guarantee fund of $25,000 to see it through. Came the Sunday concert, and radio fans, thousands of them, stopped their Sunday putterings to listen in, voted the experiment a success. Managers scouting around the darkened Curran Theatre, saw great patches of vacant seats, thought differently, gave thanks to the few loyal subscribers and the Standard Oil Co., who had furnished the guarantee.

In Rochester, the Philharmonic Orchestra gave its opening concert. At just the appointed time Conductor Eugene Goossens, trimmest of all conductors, sent floating through the spaces of the Eastman Theatre the honest harmonies of Weber's Oberon Overture, the enchanted woods of Debussy's L'Apres-Midi, Respighi's Concerto Gregoriano, new to Rochester, stately, breathing the musty grandeur of old cathedrals and shufffling monks. Rochester applauded it courteously. Rochester saved its loudest approval for Tchaikovsky's Pathetique, after its awful pessimism had finally been led by the cellos and the big basses into a despair too deep for the violins to follow.

In Boston, Ethel Leginska, one-time (TiME, May 3) disappearing pianist, led her new orchestra, the Boston Philharmonic, before fastidious New Englanders; received mingled irony and praise. As all admitted, it was the leader's orchestra, directed nerve on nerve to sheer hypnosis. In Liszt's Hungarian Fantasia, the piece de resistance, Miss Leginska played the piano part, leaving the orchestra, as critics commented, with no mother to guide it, in spite of which it revealed euphony, balance, potential flexibility. A tremendous handicap was the acoustics of Mechanic's Hall. Tumultuous applause from the conductor's own devoted followers augured well for the season's support.

Ideal

When Manhattan concertgoers departed from performances by the Philadelphia Symphony Orchestra in Carnegie Hall last fortnight, most of their talk ran on the "spectacle" Conductor Leopold Stokpwski had provided. Hoping, he said, to enhance the beauty of his music, and free the ear from distraction by the eye, he had hidden his orchestra in gloom (TIME, Oct. 18). But he had placed himself under a refulgent yellow spotlight. The latter, he explained, was a necessary evil. A conductor must be seen by his men. Unkind critics said that Dr. Stokowski had been bitten by the David Belasco show-off bug. The kindest ones declared that by making himself a cynosure, Dr. Stokowski had spoiled his hoped-for effect.

Last week, Dr. Stokowski issued a statement: ... "I now see clearly that until we can have the necessary equipment of an especially constructed stage, no progress can be made. . . . The necessary stage arrangements for sinking the orchestra to a lower level. . . and invisible, do not exist in present concert halls. . . . This is the ideal I am working for. Will anyone help me to attain it?"

The week ran --it, but no Morris Gest, or other enterprising producer, no Otto Kahn or other Maecenas, not even Patron Idea-man Edward W. Bok came forward to help Dr. Stokowski. People of the maddeningly practical turn of mind suggested that the ardent artist persuade his audiences to close the"ir eyes.

*Seventy-year-old U. S. composer, living in Switzerland.