Prodigal's Return

A sad and disappointed German was to be found a dozen years ago struggling to carry on the first U. S. Hofbrau. In his dark-paneled restaurant on 30th Street, Manhattan, he would tell proudly of the days when he had persuaded Theodore Roosevelt to eat pigs' feet and calf's head, when he had warned President Taft, a great steak-eater, against digging his grave with his teeth. In his palmy days August Janssen owned 20 Hofbraus. He spent $1,000,000 advertising JANSSEN WANTS TO SEE YOU.* But in 1921 Prohibition was withering the Hofbrau trade. And more distressing to August Janssen was his son Werner, a senior at Dartmouth. Father Janssen had offered him $250,000 if he would stop his music-tinkering and become a restaurant man. Son Werner had refused. Last week August Janssen had good reason to be proud. Son Werner's Dixie Fugue was played at the Festival of American Music which Howard Hanson (Merry Mount) puts on each spring at Rochester, N. Y. More, the proud New York Philharmonic announced last week that Werner Janssen would be one of its conductors next season. In its Save-Our- Symphony campaign (TIME, May 7 et ante) there had bobbed up many a contributor who wanted to know more about what U. S. composers were accomplishing. To that end Werner Janssen was signed up to serve with such established European conductors as Arturo Toscanini, Bruno Walter, Otto Klemperer. Rochester was unwilling to commit itself on Dixie Fugue, a blaring, dissonant finale to a Louisiana Suite played heretofore only in Europe. But when the horns and kettle drums were still, Conductor Hanson held up the concert until Werner Janssen came down the aisle for a bow, his long head bobbing in front of him, his right arm waving thanks. For Janssen the Rochester concert meant most as an anniversary. New Year's Eve in New York, his first serious music, had its premiere there under Hanson five years ago.

Up to 1929 Werner Janssen's musical way had been hard. At Dartmouth he conducted a restaurant orchestra, waited on table between pieces. After graduation he went to Boston, sold sheet music by day, earned $3 a night playing the piano for Leo Reisman at the Hotel Brunswick. From there he went to New York, started writing musical shows. But his ambition reached higher and his energy was tremendous. New Year's Eve in New York was his lucky piece. He went to Cleveland to hear Nikolai Sokoloff play it, promptly got a radio job conducting the Guardian Trust Orchestra. In Cleveland he heard that he had won the three-year Prix de Rome fellowship. His sister Dorothy had sent New Year's Eve to the judges.

In Europe Werner Janssen had chances. He has conducted in Rome, Turin, Milan, Berlin, Budapest. Herbert F. Peyser, meticulous foreign critic for the New York Times, went to Finland last winter when Janssen conducted an all-Sibelius program in the composer's presence. Critic Peyser wrote the report that won Janssen his Philharmonic engagement. Said he: "Sibelius turned to me visibly shaken and stammered, 'For the first time I am hearing my work exactly as I conceived it.' "

Conductor Janssen likes to have people forget his Hofbrau background. But Father Janssen proudly asks everyone he meets now if they know about his son Werner. Father Janssen is happy, also, on his own account. Repeal business has picked up in the old restaurant on 30th Street, the only one he has left. And he intends to branch out again, open a big place in Rockefeller Center. The new Hofbrau may be ready next winter when Werner's time comes to conduct the Philharmonic.

*The slogan originated with a raw bus boy who, when Janssen asked him to summon the head waiter, shouted "Janssen wants to see you." To remind himself to reprimand the boy Janssen jotted the phrase in his notebook. Its catchiness appealed to him and he repeated it on 50 postcards, mailed them to his friends. Next night, he swears, all 50 appeared at his Hofbrau.

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