Batons Up!

Four backs turned briskly on four smart audiences, four batons tapped attention almost simultaneously and a new U. S. music season last week was fairly under way. Fortnight ago Detroit and San Francisco stole marches, staged their opening symphony concerts ahead of other cities. Detroit displayed all its old show of affection for Conductor Ossip Gabrilowitsch. San Francisco's concert, under Russian Issai Dobrowen, suffered from the poor acoustics of the Tivoli Opera House (used symphonically for the first time), but there was the added feature of tea served on the stage by the Symphony Association's Women's Auxiliary. The four opening concerts given last week were by the great orchestras in Manhattan, Cleveland, Philadelphia, Boston.

Manhattan paid its first-night court to Erich Kleiber, Berlin conductor who appeared in the U. S. for the first time last year, managed to wear the seven-league boots of Arturo Toscanini without disastrous stumbling. Philharmonic-Symphony subscribers appeared to approve last week the re-engagement which Conductor Kleiber had earned by his painstaking musicianship, his intelligent, energetic sponsoring of new works, his amiable personality. Reconciled now to beginning the season without the great Toscanini, they seemed to take a solid satisfaction in Kleiber's clear, vigorous interpretations, particularly in his reading of a crinkling Suite for Chamber Orchestra written as dinner music by German Georg Philipp Telemann, a prolific contemporary of Bach. Few saw occasion this year (as many did last year) to compare Kleiber with the incomparable Toscanini. Kleiber is big-shouldered, makes militant, jerky gestures where Toscanini is gracefully electric. Kleiber takes gratefully the applause which is chaff to Toscanini, nor was his performance last week so exciting as to detract all attention from the former Anna Case, now the wife of the Philharmonic's chief guarantor, Clarence Hungerford Mackay, or from the new concertmaster, Mishel Piastre, a humpty-dumpty-figure, all shirt front, whose violin sounded a full, sensuous tone. Toscanini furnished excitement from Switzerland. He was through with Bayreuth, he cabled. The Wagner sanctuary was for him now nothing but a "banal theatre." Henceforth he would conduct only Manhattan's orchestra.

Philadelphia's first concert is never complete without some stunt by Conductor Leopold Stokowski. Stokowski played superbly four of his own transcriptions from the early classical composers Monteverdi, Lulli, Purcell, Vivaldi. Then, at intermission, he begged his audience to stay and "listen to the birdies." The birdies proved to be two giant oscillators which shrieked and yowled into microphones for the purpose of showing Stokowski how his broadcasts will sound this year coming from a crowded auditorium. Again the Philadelphia (Philco) Storage Battery Co. will sponsor Stokowski's radio-concerts. Other Philadelphia Orchestra conductors will be Toscanini, Bernardino Molinari, Fritz Reiner, Alexander Smallens.

Boston does not believe in guest conductors. To her complete satisfaction King Sergei Koussevitzky opened the home season with a magnificent blend of Bach, Brahms, Cesar Franck, Ravel. Late in October he will take the orchestra on tour to Buffalo, Cincinnati, Detroit, Columbus, Pittsburgh, Ithaca.

Cleveland dressed up to match new Severance Hall, built for the Orchestra and dedicated last winter (TIME, Feb. 16). Conductor Nikolai Sokolov indulged none of his predilections for new, unproven music. For him the occasion deserved Strauss, Franck, Beethoven, Brahms.

Other major orchestras are scheduled to give their first programs this week: The Chicago Symphony with Conductor Frederick Stock beginning his 27th season; the Cincinnati Symphony with Eugene Goossens beginning his first; the Seattle Symphony with Karl Krueger. Next week will begin the Los Angeles Philharmonic with Artur Rodzinski, the Minneapolis Symphony with Henri Verbrugghen, the St. Louis Symphony with Vladimir Golschmann, the Milwaukee Philharmonic with Frank Laird Waller. Rochester, N. Y. with different guest conductors, Portland, Ore. (Willem van Hoogstraten), Omaha (Joseph Littau) and Syracuse (Vladimir Shavitch) save their openings for November.

News Out of Worcester

Two episodes last week gave the annual music festival of Worcester, Mass, wider publicity than the pedantic excellence of the affair has normally enjoyed during its 72 years. One episode might have been anticipated, for when the name of Percy Aldridge ("Country Gardens") Grainger appears on a program it is more than likely to forecast a performance out of the commonplace. The second episode concerned German Soprano Editha Fleischer, especially imported to be leading soloist in the Festival's lastnight program.

Soprano Fleischer had had a disagreement with Festival Conductor Albert Stoessel at a morning rehearsal. She had objected to the local accompanist provided for her, asked to have summoned from Manhattan little Kurt Ruhrseitz, her coach at the Metropolitan Opera House. Pianist Ruhrseitz arrived but by performance time Soprano Fleischer was missing. Festival directors searched widely for her, finally attributed her disappearance to temperament, proceeded with the concert without her. The directors should have known better. If Soprano Fleischer has flights of "temperament" she never shows them. After the concert she was discovered ia her hotel room (she had engaged two rooms, the directors had searched only one), lying on the floor deep in sleep. She said she must have taken two sleeping tablets instead of the prescribed one, in order to have a short nap before the concert. Oversleeping cost her her fee of $1,200.

Percy Grainger has always deplored convention, for himself and for his music. Whenever he appears on the street he invariably attracts attention because he will wear no hat. One day he may tramp with a knapsack on his back into Manhattan to call on his publishers, the next day trundle a wheelbarrow to the railroad station in White Plains, N. Y., carry home his own luggage just for the exercise. He loves primitive people and customs. Rollicking "Country Gardens," like much of his music, is based on a folk tune, an English morris dance. He wrote it when he was a private in the U. S. Army, rated as a second-class musician who played the oboe and the saxophone. He has since seen it overshadow all his other output in popularity, has seen it become the biggest-selling concert piece in the U. S. (nearly 25,.000 copies). His wedding, like his soldiering, illustrates his passion for being one with the People. He married Danish Ella Viola Strom in Hollywood Bowl, the orchestra for altar, the great Bowlful of everyday spectators for guests. His gift to the bride was a gift for everyone : A symphonic work, "To a Nordic Princess."

In his music Percy Grainger often fore-swears the ordinary Italian markings such as allegro, legato, pianissimo. He writes for the People, marks his music accordingly: "fairly slowly flowingly," "slacken lots," "louden lots." Nor does Grainger confine himself to conventional instrumentation. His contribution to last week's Worcester Festival was "Tribute to Foster''* which called for the use of musical glasses and bowls. Only vaudevillians have heretofore played glasses in public. They take glasses of different pitch, tune them further by putting varying amounts of water in them, play them by rubbing a moistened finger around the rims. Earnest Worcester choristers, each with a glass, put on the act last week, rubbed a mellifluous accompaniment to their own singing of a clever elaboration on Stephen Foster's "Doodah."

* Stephen Collins Foster, composer of "My Old Kentucky Home," "Swanee River," "Old Black Joe," "Nelly Ely."

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