Disorganized Russian

Twenty-seven years ago a lean, gloomy Russian with a long face and convict haircut heard his Prelude in C-sharp Minor crash across the U. S. on a thousand pianos and make him famous. Long before that time Sergei Vassilievitch Rachmaninoff had been charming Europe with his brooding, regretful compositions, bewildering concertgoers with his speed and skill on the piano. But one ambition, to write a great symphony, he had not achieved. His First Symphony, in 1897, fell so flat that he needed a hypnotist to restore his nerve. His Second, in 1908, fared better, was praised for its rich, Slavic melodies, but is seldom played. Last week more than 2,800 people packed into Carnegie Hall to hear the Philadelphia Orchestra play his Third for the first time in Manhattan.

Blond, graceful Leopold Stokowski mounted the stand, back as guest conductor with the Orchestra he left last spring to go to Hollywood (TIME, Oct. 19). Conductor Stokowski took pains to make his first concert of the New York season glitter, made the new symphony wait till last. Devoted to Oriental instruments, he swelled the percussion section with a group of weird brass Oriental gongs, had them bong dolefully through his own transcription of music from Boris Godunov.

The Rachmaninoff Third, when it came, did not impress critics any more than it had in Philadelphia at its world premiere last fortnight. The choir of strings sang out lovely melodies, the instrumentation was competent, but the work as a whole was disorganized. Decided the Herald Tribune's Lawrence Gilman: "It has much of his familiar quality--his blend of sombre brooding and lyrical expansiveness and defiant gaiety. But the eminent Russian has said most of it before, in substance, and has said it with more weight and felicity and salience." The Times's Olin Downes proposed: "Would not a pair of shears benefit the proportions of this work?"

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