What's the Point?

In Britain's provinces, wiry little Harmonica Player Larry Adler was a bust. The British apparently didn't think there was enough musical nourishment in a mouth organ to make a full meal. With two London concerts coming up, Larry Adler, whose mouthings are a big draw in the U.S., arranged a special press concert to persuade reviewers that he is something more than a campfire musician.

Reported the Daily Herald critic: "I went skeptical, like most of the audience, I fancy, but after listening to a programme of Bach, Mozart, Debussy, Bloch and Enesco, I was convinced that Adler is a very considerable artist and that in his hands the harmonica can indeed be made to do almost anything--including playing chords and imitating a plucked string."

London audiences last week thought so too. But the Daily Mail's Critic Ralph Hill thought he saw a fundamental catch in it. Wrote he: "Where does this display lead to? Nowhere, as I see it. To substitute a mouth organ supported by a piano for an oboe and strings or for the delicate orchestral palette of Debussy may pass as a stunt, but musically it is a fantastic distortion of values. In short, the proper place for Mr. Adler's skillful and artistic manipulation of a mouth organ is the music hall .and not the hall of music."

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