Symphonies For Fun

It was an excellent concert, but not a single admission ticket was sold. None of the 100-odd musicians got paid a cent, not even the conductor. On the contrary, every one of them had to pay 25-c-. The Rehearsal Symphony, which meets twice a month in a Los Angeles auditorium, is the only U.S. orchestra of professional caliber which plays unpaid, almost unheard--in short, strictly for fun.

The Symphony's membership (it ranges from 65 to no) is made up of skilled men from cinema studio orchestras, plus a few radio and Los Angeles Philharmonic players. In its year and a half of playing it has fiercely shunned publicity.

Chairman of the board and founder of the orchestra is a blonde, fast-talking, 29-year-old female violinist. So intent has she been in keeping herself and the rest of the group anonymous that TIME'S Hollywood correspondent declared: "To divulge her name would be the worst possible breach of journalistic faith." The Symphony invites conductors, well and little known, to preside over its sessions. Jose Iturbi, Igor Stravinsky, Georg Szell, Arnold Schoenberg were glad of the chance. Erich Wolfgang Korngold, highbrow-turned-movie-composer, showed up with only 16-c- in his pocket. Nine members of the orchestra were assessed 1-c- each to make up his 25-c-. Favorite conductor so far has been Bruno Walter, who exclaimed at the end of his concert: "This is paradise." Positions in the orchestra are rotated, so that every horn has a chance to be first horn, every fiddler a shot at being concertmaster. In a typical session, one or two full-length works, preferably-modern, are gone through with all the fits & starts of a real rehearsal. Then they are played without a break. Audiences--friends of the players--are small, select.

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