Summer Festivals

More & more U. S. concertgoers are discovering a new and painless way to enjoy music in the summer. They lie on the ground wrapped in blankets, gaze at the stars, spoon a bit, doze off, take their symphonies between nods. This detached, easygoing way of listening can be indulged on the outskirts of many of the outdoor music festivals that dot the U. S.

At some of these festivals, which are designed to soothe rather than to stimulate, the musicians loll through the program like their audience. Not so the musicians of the impeccable Boston Symphony, who, under the fastidious baton of Serge Koussevitzky, delicately perform each year a carefully chosen sheaf of symphonies for visitors and tourists at Stockbridge in Massachusetts' Berkshire Hills. In & around an acoustically perfect, wedge-shaped $80,000 pavilion (called with New England sobriety a "Music Shed"), which rises on the greensward at Tanglewood, where Nathaniel Hawthorne once wrote, visiting Boston Brahmins and socialites, whether lying down or sitting up, take their summer music as critically as their winter.

Last week the Bostonians ended their third and most extensive summer (nine concerts) in the Shed. Though these nine concerts were small potatoes beside the 52 at Manhattan's Lewisohn Stadium, the 24 at California's Hollywood Bowl, the Berkshire Festival, because of the polished perfection of its performances, still held its place as the No. 1 U. S. summer musical event. Its most ambitious undertaking this year: a performance of Bach's mighty B Minor Mass (with four top-notch soloists and a local chorus trained by Harvard's G. Wallace Woodworth) that would have made musical history anywhere.

A dozen cities and resorts this summer heard music, some of it free, in parks, bowls, stadiums, on a river bank (in Washington). Conductors there were by the dozen, but few topnotchers. Bruno Walter tried out as a summer bush leaguer, was well received at Hollywood Bowl and the San Francisco World's Fair.* In Chicago, Grant Park attendance, the largest in the U. S., was expected to total 3,500,000 people from June 1 to Labor Day. Typical figures elsewhere: 300,000 at Manhattan's Stadium; 123,000 for twelve free concerts in Washington; 76,000 for 24 at Chicago's Ravinia; 132,000 for 33 at Philadelphia's Robin Hood Dell.

Lily Pons, with her husband, Andre Kostelanetz, on the podium, was once more the summer's best draw, had six major engagements, attracted 60,000 people to Milwaukee's Washington Park, where an orchestra shell was donated by retired Brewer Emil Blatz. Pianist Alec Templeton and Soprano Kirsten Flagstad trailed her, with five dates each. Flagstad drew 225,000 to Grant Park, 20,000 to Manhattan's Stadium, but only 3,000 on a hot night in Philadelphia's Dell. Oscar Levant's fame in Information Please is paying out. He had four engagements, drew 10,000 at Robin Hood Dell. Marian Anderson brought the Stadium its top audience, 23,000 customers. Last week Baritone John Charles Thomas and 8,000 other musicians, including a 2,000-piece band, packed 100,000 people in Soldier Field for the annual Chicagoland Music Festival (admission 50-c- and $1) put on by the Tribune.

Despite such impressive attendance figures, no new music of any consequence was heard. Many a musician dozed placidly while playing, for the umptieth time, Beethoven's Fifth Symphony, Tschaikowsky's Sixth.

*The New York World's Fair ignored good music even more pointedly in its second summer than in its first.

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