Playing for Fun

When Pianist-Conductor Jacques Rachmilovich arrived in the U.S. eight years ago, he was almost broke. For a while, he worked in a Los Angeles gas station. In his spare time he took over (without pay) the baton of a nameless group of Hollywood movie musicians who were so bored with stop & go script music that they banded together to play, once a week, some piece of music all the way through.

In 1945, the orchestra gave its first public performance and became the Santa Monica Symphony Orchestra. Last year when the orchestra played for the radio, one listener--Arturo Toscanini--was delighted. He rushed to the phone and shouted to an NBC big shot: "This orchestra is wonderful ... who is this Rachmilovich? . . . Let's have him here."

Last week, Jacques Rachmilovich was on the podium in front of Toscanini's own NBC Symphony, to guest-conduct the first of two concerts. His programming followed Rachmilovich's principle of playing music that other U.S. orchestras have not yet done to death. Instead of Beethoven and Brahms, NBC fans heard Darius Milhaud's Suite Provenc,ale and Dmitri Kabalevsky's fiery Fete Populaire.

Rachmilovich has used the same principle in building the reputation of his play-for-fun Santa Monica Symphony. When he finally got some of his money out of Europe (a friend sent it to him in Swiss watches, which sold easily in the war-short U.S.), he put it into making records ("something people would want--and would have to take ours or go without").

The movie studios, which have first call on his musicians, are his biggest worry. His favorite Hollywood story: "Only a tympanist was present for all four rehearsals before an important concert. When the conductor congratulated him, he said 'Thank you, Maestro--but I'm afraid I can't make the performance.' "

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