"I Like This Way"

"Out! Out! Out! Right now! You're through! Get the hell out of here and don't come back!"

The Detroit Symphony Orchestra musicians, peacefully packing their instruments after rehearsal, gave a startled gasp. Across the stage, bellowing like a Straussian tuba, rushed Henry H. Reichhold, the terrible-tempered industrialist (Reichhold Chemicals, Inc.) and chief financial backer of the orchestra. His shouts were directed at First Cellist Georges Miquelle for "disloyalty." Miquelle left, but his leaving snapped an old and mounting tension.

For the last three years, some Detroit Symphony musicians had been muttering an obbligato behind their music sheets about the musical methods and tastes of their conductor, Karl Krueger, the 55-year-old Kansan who had led the Seattle and Kansas City orchestras out of a musical desert. Reichhold had an answer to that: "Perhaps the American public hasn't learned to appreciate the German school of conducting of which Krueger is a disciple. I like this way of playing music, and it's the kind of music Detroit is going to get." Furthermore, he said: "I think a good shake-up and house cleaning is just what the Detroit Symphony needs. Troublemakers had better resign now before I fire them."

Frozen Up. Symphony President Reichhold was confident that he had most of the musicians and concertgoers behind him. In origin and implication, he maintained, the dissensions were "entirely political and in no sense musical." Whatever their implication, the dissensions continued. The Detroit local of the American Federation of Musicians disbanded the musicians' committee that had been dealing with the symphony management. Reichhold posted notice that the orchestra's 28-concert spring tour was off.

Many musicians felt it was just as well; it would hardly have been a happy affair. Said one: "Everybody feels under suspicion . . . There is very little conversation ... It's frozen the situation up."

It had also, apparently, frozen up their playing, and Detroit critics were quick to notice it. Wrote the Detroit Times after a concert last week: "A morass of spotty mediocrity . . . the low point of the season." After the next night's repeat performance, Reichhold grabbed a real hot potato with both hands. He rushed backstage, delivered an ultimatum: "Either the orchestra does something immediately about the press, or 90 men will be out of a job. Dr. Krueger and I have fought bad publicity by ourselves long enough. Now it's up to you." He ordered them to protest, en masse, then roared: "Anybody here who wants to call the papers and tell them what has happened here can go ahead and do it."

Attendance Up. Seven called Times Critic Harvey Taylor and told him, he reported, that they had signed a paper under virtual coercion demanding that Taylor himself be barred from all future concerts. The Times front-paged the whole story.

Boss Reichhold and Conductor Krueger hurriedly called a peace meeting with the press--but the boss had one more threat to deliver. Said Reichhold: if reports of dissension within the organization continued, he would withdraw his financial support from the orchestra. He would make up his mind within the next three weeks.

One result of all the Page One squabble: attendance at concerts had picked up--perhaps, mused one symphonygoer, because other ticket holders thought they might get to see somebody wrap a cello around somebody else's neck.

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