Flashlight Farewell

At 7 o'clock one morning last week a line started to form outside Manhattan's Carnegie Hall. A concert was to be given that evening at 9. By noon the queue stretched halfway down a long city block. Some people brought campstools, boxes of lunch. By nightfall there was a call for extra police. The crowd grew until 5,000 persons were clamoring for admittance to standing room available for only 140. No one had ever foreseen a near-riot for a Philharmonic concert, not even for the U. S. farewell of Arturo Toscanini.

On the mid-March day last week's concert was first announced, every seat in Carnegie Hall was sold at topnotch prices within a few hours. Subsequent demands fairly exhausted the patience of the box-office staff. One person would argue that he had never heard a Toscanini performance, that this was therefore his last chance. The next in line would claim that he had attended all the Maestro's concerts, that he could not miss the last. Speculators were offered $100 and more for a ticket. In Portland, Ore. a music-lover was ready to charter a plane, ily East for the performance. He stayed home, because no amount of money could get him a seat. Inside the Hall bedlam would have been let loose again, except for the little white-haired Maestro. He bowed gravely to his wildly-cheering audience, wheeled on his podium, rapped smartly for attention. Toscanini was giving his last U. S. concert not for acclaim, not for money but for the benefit of the Orchestra which has played for him during the past eleven seasons. Once his baton was raised he became the humble servant of Beethoven and Wagner, began by making the first Leonore overture seem so buoyant and tuneful that it was hard to regard him as a conductor nearing 70.

In the Beethoven D Major Concerto Violinist Jascha Heifetz played flawlessly. Yet all eyes were not on him but on the leader swaying gently from side to side, his left hand raised for every pianissimo, quivering over his heart when he wanted special feeling. From Wagner there was the Meister singer overture, given such verve that the audience shouted its enthusiasm. In sequence came the gentle Siegfried Idyl, the prelude and finale from Tristan und Isolde, a performance of The Ride of the Valkyries with shadings so subtle, with force so dynamic that it really seemed like a preternatural flight through the skies.

The Ride of the Valkyries ended the program, brought the audience to its feet, too moved at first to cheer the conductor as he turned from the players, looking suddenly tired. In that tense moment a news cameraman popped up at the footlights, exploded a flashlight directly in the Maestro's face. Toscanini fled to the wings. Out leaped Bruno Zirato, the Philharmonic's assistant manager, to seize the photographer by the scruff, hustle him out to the lobby where detectives and doormen de prived him of his camera and the plate he had used.

The audience wanted more of Toscanini, clapped, stamped, cheered. But the little Italian never returned. Instead Maurice Van Praag, the Orchestra's personnel manager, faced the clamoring crowd, said: "The man who just came down here and snapped that picture almost blinded our beloved Maestro. He asks me to say that he loves you all and begs to be excused." With that a mighty chorus of boos and hisses filled the Hall.

In the lobby the luckless cameraman was identified as Frank Muto of Hearst's International News Photos, who had bought a seat early, kept his camera hidden until the chance came to snap the conductor bowing his goodbye. The audience filed out denouncing the Hearstling as a "desecrator," a "barbarian," a "vandal." But Frank Muto Was unabashed while he waited to get his camera back. One blazing-eyed young woman marched up to him and flayed him for having "marred the ending of a great historic concert." "But it might have been a grand picture," retorted Frank Muto who is no musician.

Backstage Toscanini quickly recovered. Not really blinded, he had been dazed, upset, enraged. Cameramen have long been requested not to use flashlights near the Maestro's weak eyes. The request was disregarded when he arrived in the U. S. last January. Last week the shock was greater because he was under a heavier strain. After his next-to-last concert when the audience stood cheering him for 15 minutes, Toscanini had shut himself up in his dressing-room and wept.

Regardless of Frank Muto there would have been no farewell speeches from the stage last week, no shower of flowers. Bouquets, Toscanini once said, "are for prima donnas and corpses, not for a conductor." When he had regained his composure he received a delegation from the Philharmonic directors who presented him with an elaborate silver beer service (he never drinks beer), a Beethoven letter and a glowing testimonial. From the Hall he went to his hotel where he gave a supper party for his orchestramen.

Critics wrote reverently when they saluted the departing Maestro, recalled his many magical performances, his tireless quest for perfection, his abhorrence of all claptrap. Few other conductors could have withstood the adulation that has been lavished on Toscanini during his decade with the Philharmonic. Yet not one commentator has failed to point to Toscanini's humility in the presence of great music. When players interrupted a rehearsal to applaud their leader, he would cut them short with: "It is not I, Gentlemen. It is Beethoven."

As if to atone for his abrupt leavetaking, Toscanini issued one of his rare press statements, expressed gratitude and affection for his audiences and his orchestra. But he would permit no public demonstration when he sailed for home, probably never to return to the U. S. again. Aboard the S. S. Champlain he locked himself in his cabin with Mrs. Toscanini, admitted a few friends, barred all reporters, all photographers.

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