Stokie v. Cuba

Like most good conductors, Leopold Stokowski has a temper. Once he held up a Montevideo concert for half an hour while ushers gathered up programs which said his real name was Stokes.* Once the silver-haired maestro walked out on the Mexico Symphony Orchestra after a fuss-&-feathers over an incomplete orchestration. Last week in Cuba, Stokie was in another skirmish with Latin Americans.

Stokowski, pleading other engagements, had refused a March invitation to guest-conduct the Havana Philharmonic. But then a Chilean impresario, Jorge Estrade, signed him up for a Havana concert in February with the same orchestra. In due time, Stokie arrived with his luscious, 21-year-old wife, Gloria, bustled into Havana's Hotel Nacional. Soon the lobby boasted a life-size cardboard cutout of Stokowski, announcing that he would conduct the Beethoven Ninth on Feb.11.

Then the trouble began. Philharmonic officials announced that their musicians would not be permitted to play for Stokowski. Scouting around for a pick-up orchestra, Stokie discovered that the first-rate musicians in Havana were in the Philharmonic.

Sublime Music. To the press Stokie muttered, "boycott." Then he scurried to Cuba's bewildered President Ramon Grau San Martin, who assigned his secretary to act as mediator. Barked Stokowski: "The man has not yet been born who can dictate to me."

To the Philharmonic's conductor, Austrian-born Erich Kleiber he sent a message in Spanish: "To save the sublime music of Beethoven, I request your cooperation as a colleague." Replied Kleiber: "In order to save the sublime music of Beethoven you need a good orchestra."

Good or bad, an orchestra was finally got together. By combing through Havana's military bands, Stokowski found 55 men who had been known to blow horns. To sing Schiller's Ode to Joy, which concludes the symphony, he hired a Cuban chorus of 150 who knew no German. Then 21 string players and a tenor who knew German were flown from New York by chartered plane. And Stokowski triumphantly assured Cubans that the sublime music of Beethoven would be conducted by the sublime Stokowski--three days late.

* A hard-dying rumor, but no fact. Stokowski was born in London, to a Polish father, Josef Boleslaw Kopernicus Stokowski, and an Irish mother.

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