The Bells

The Philadelphia Orchestra has always been famously friendly with Pianist-Composer Sergei Rachmaninoff. In 1920 it was the first U. S. organization to play his choral symphony The Bells. Blond-maned Leopold Stokowski used to hire Rachmaninoff often as guest soloist, liked to slap his back in public. In Philadelphia this season Stokowski led the orchestra through the world premiere of Rachmaninoff's Third Symphony, later took it to New York (TIME, Nov. 23, 1936). When, after 17 years absence. The Bells was again heard last week in Manhattan, the Philadelphia Orchestra, under new Conductor Eugene Ormandy, contrived its return.

Like many a Russian, Rachmaninoff had been fascinated by the weird poems of Edgar Allan Poe. Before the War he determined to work into a symphony Poe's tinkling sleigh bells, golden marriage bells, frightened alarm bells and bitter, iron-tongued dirge bells. As text he used Russian Poet Constantin Balmont's version of Poe's second most famous poem, completed the work in 1913.

The text that last week's audience heard was neither Poe's nor Balmont's. It was Fanny S. Copeland's English translation of a German translation of Balmont's Russian translation. Though the poem had grown worse in its travels, nobody seemed to care. The audience was thrilled by Rachmaninoff's ingenious sonorities, by the whispering pianissimi and loud thundering of the University of Pennsylvania chorus, by the shivering of parallel fifths in the high winds. Critics found The Bells an effective piece of scoring, mourned its unevenness. The audience was less reserved, applauded loudly, even more loudly when Composer Rachmaninoff came on after the intermission and played his Second Concerto in C Minor with almost inhuman virtuosity.

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