Friday on His Own

If Robinson Crusoe's Man Friday had left him, gone adventuring on his own, it would have upset 18th Century literature no more than jazzdom was upset last week when Ferde Grofe stepped forth in Manhattan as a conductor. For 13 years Ferde Grofe was Paul Whiteman's right-hand man. He made all the symphonicky arrangements which earned the Whiteman orchestra its serious regard. Expensive radio stars had a hand in last week's concert : enormous Vaughn De Leath, announced as the first voice to go on the air; fat Morton Downey who looked foolish singing "Kiss Me Goodnight''; the four black Mills brothers huddled around a spikelike amplifier, knees quivering, sounding like a trumpet, a pair of saxophones and a tuba. The actual concert, save as it benefited unemployed musicians, was unimportant. But when bald, egg-shaped Ferde Grofe came sheepishly on the platform, it was formal evidence of the Whiteman-Grofe split. There is no bad blood between them but chunky Ferde Grofe was tired of squeezing behind the scenes.

It was no novelty for Ferdinand Rudolph von Grofe to be performing in public. He used to play first viola in the Los Angeles Philharmonic beside his grandfather, a 'cellist, and his uncle who was concertmaster. Grofe's family in-tended him for business so at 14 he ran away, became an elevator operator, then a truckman, a milkman, a heaver in an iron foundry, a pressman in a bookbindery. When he composed a march for an Elks' Reunion in Los Angeles his family relented, let him go in for music.

Music for Grofe then came to mean playing every instrument in the band. He toured the California mining camps with one Professor Jerome who gave the miners dancing lessons. He played once in a brothel. He played in the first Paul Whiteman orchestra when jazz, unknown in the East, was starting its swift, insidious advance on the Barbary Coast. A good musician, a born improviser, he was soon mak-ing all the Whiteman arrangements. Whiteman commissioned George Gershwin to write him some music for a serious concert. Gershwin's Rhapsody in Blue was a piano solo. Grofe scored it.

Grofe needs outside inspiration to build on. He played his own compositions last week (Metropolis, Mississippi Suite, Kmite Rockne, Five Pictures of the Grand Canyon) and just as for years he made sleazy dance tunes sound like something, so his own music was effective because of the way he varied his rhythms and instruments. Conducting, he made his big climax bigger by crouching down on his square legs, pointing a stubby forefinger. Grofe is planning an orchestra of his own now, but he is also fulfilling the destiny laid out for him by his parents. In Teaneck, N. J., his home, he has quietly built up a nice little business: The Grofe Realty Co.

Pacific Symphonies

Some of the members of the San Francisco Symphony have been quietly look-ing around this winter for new jobs. Reason: San Francisco's orchestra has felt Depression badly. Last winter it had to cut down its personnel. This season it started with a guaranty of only $75.000, as against $90.000 the year before, $105,000 in 1929-30. By December the orchestra was unable to meet its payroll. It looked as though it might not finish the season. Last week, though, things were brighter. The players got some of their back pay and a sweeping campaign for $175,000 was in active preparation.

San Francisco needs either one patron like William Andrews Clark Jr. who supports the Los Angeles Philharmonic or the unified backing of all the city's music enthusiasts. For years petty cliques have hindered the development of the San Francisco orchestra. In 1915 when bald, bearded Alfred Hertz went there to conduct, friends of social, correct Henry Hadley, his predecessor, went so far as to accuse him of being pro-German.-- Hertz had a good friend in Jacob Bertha Levison, president of the Musical Association which sponsors the orchestra, but there were potential patrons who could not forget that Jews were in command. There was anti-Hertz feeling throughout his long, able administration (1915-30). Without it he might have been persuaded to withdraw his resignation. He likes San Francisco, still lives there.

There are two able young routine conductors in San Francisco now: Russian Issai Dobrowen and British Basil Cameron. Jacob Levison, 69-year-old insurance man, as head of the Musical Association, probably gives more than anyone else towards the orchestra's support. President Levison played the flute himself once in an amateur symphonic band. He staunchly advocates music as a hobby for businessmen. Prominent businessmen who were drafted to boost the $175,000 campaign starting this week included Bankers Mortimer Fleishhacker and William Henry Crocker, Sugar-broker Wallace McKinney Alexander, Chamber of Commerceman Leland Cutter. Robert Watt Miller, able young son of President Christian Otto Gerberding Miller of Pacific Lighting Corp., has charge of the drive.

Depression hit another Pacific Coast orchestra early in the autumn. The Seattle Symphony had to curtail its season by half, as a result received the resignation of Conductor Karl Krueger. William Clark, book-collecting son of the late Senator Clark of Montana, stands by the Los Angeles Philharmonic even in time of trouble, but his job is lessened by the great popularity of Conductor Artur Rodzinsky. The Portland (Ore.) Symphony under Conductor Willem van Hoogstratten ran an aggressive campaign this season, reduced its salaries.

Magnets in Manhattan

C. A performance of Tristan und Isolde last week drew the biggest crowd of any Tristan in the history of Manhattan's Metropolitan Opera Company. Contralto Doris Doe, a native of Bar Harbor, Maine, made her debut as Brangane, Isolde's henchwoman. But she was not the magnet. It was Goeta Ljungberg, tall, blonde Swedish soprano who arouses more & more enthusiasm each time she sings (TIME, Feb. 1). Her Isolde last week was not a heroic, leather-lunged creature to be heard over all the brasses. It was vocally uneven. But it was an Isolde deeply personal and finely imagined, an Isolde who made stage pictures worthy of the music in the pit.

Between acts the lobby was abuzz with Ljungberg talk. According to one story, the day she arrived from Europe she was informed at the opera house that her brother had called. Soprano Ljungberg, one of eight children, knew of no brother in the U. S. so she dismissed the subject. A few days later she received a call from a tall Swede, vaguely familiar. He was a brother who had disappeared 26 years ago from their home in the north of Sweden. Soprano Ljungberg well remembers the day. She had just made her first loaves of bread, set them proudly on the windowsill to cool. Brother Ljungberg took the bread when he ran away. He lives in Brooklyn now, calls himself Youngberg because people could never learn that the L in his name was silent.

P: Another magnet in Manhattan last week was German Soprano Lotte Lehmann, pride of the Chicago Opera, now starting to give concerts in the U. S. Soprano Lehmann is a heavy, Teutonic woman. Her program listed pure German Lieder. But people who tried to get in at the last minute were greeted by a big HOUSE SOLD OUT. Soprano Ljung-berg was one of many musicians who crowded in to hear Lehmann round out each song with marvelous warmth and eloquence.

P: Next night Pianist Ignace Jan Paderewski played to 16,000 in Madison Square Garden, earned $25,000 for the Musicians' Emergency Aid, the largest amount an individual artist has ever cleared on a concert.

--Bostonians went a step farther in that direction, lost great Karl Muck.

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