With a Broad Ah

After the last kudos and kisses for Serge Koussevitzky last week (TIME, May 9), workmen swarmed into Boston's Symphony Hall. Some" splashed the downstairs walls with gay green paint, others took out seats and risers, packed in small tables and gilt & green chairs. Symphony season was over, but the 64th Boston Pops season was just beginning.

When popular Conductor Arthur Fiedler marched to the gladioli-banked podium three days after Koussevitzky's farewell, a hallful of Pops fans were there to give him a roar of welcome.

Princess & Punch. With the muscular but metronomic beat that Bostonians have come to know well in 20 years, Conductor Fiedler launched into a lively program that began with the Princess Elizabeth march, by Britain's Eric Coates. At the end of each number, instead of going offstage, he took a seat in front of his cellos and beamed while waitresses collected orders at the crowded tables--for beer, wine and the purplish lemonade known as "Pop Punch." When the applause was insistent, he signaled for an encore from more than 400 numbers that he keeps on tap. On opening night the most popular encores were Buttons and Bows and The Surrey with the Fringe on Top; as they always do when they specially like one, the fans replied with long, loud "ah-h-h's."

Greying Arthur Fiedler, 54, has been getting ah-h-h's from Boston and other cities ever since he first organized his open-air Esplanade concerts in 1929 and took over the baton of the Pops the year after. Boston-born, he grew up in the

Boston Symphony. His father and two uncles were violinists in the orchestra. After Fiedler graduated from Berlin's Royal Academy, and made his debut as a fiddler at 17, he took a seat with the Boston's strings himself. Soon after he took to the baton, he became too busy to fiddle. Part of the huge repertory he and the Pops have built up: 103 marches, 98 overtures, 115 suites, 81 piano concertos, 51 waltzes, 45 arrangements from musical comedies. Boston Pops recordings now fill more pages in RCA Victor's Red Seal catalogue (160 titles) than those of any other orchestra except the Philadelphia.

Strauss & Sparks. A debonair and handsome man, Arthur Fiedler is known around Boston as both a socialite (he married a onetime Beacon Hill debutante in 1942) and a "spark." He loves volunteer firefighting, has wangled a fire department sign for his car so he can drive right up to the fire lines. He also carries an honorary police commissioner's gold badge, likes to loaf around police headquarters. During Boston's 1942 Cocoanut Grove fire, in which 492 died, Fiedler was stationed at a morgue. During the war, like many other Bostonians over military age, he took his turn on small Coast Guard Auxiliary craft patrolling Boston Harbor.

A man who never flinches at the offbeat pop of a champagne cork while he is conducting, Arthur Fiedler knows that his music has a proper place in Boston, just as much as Koussevitzky's had. Says he: "I have no use for those snobs who look down their nose at everything but the most highbrow music--which often they don't understand anyhow. A Strauss waltz is as good a thing of its kind as a Beethoven symphony. It's nice to eat a good hunk of beef, but you want a light dessert, too." Fiedler's aim: to dish up the dessert as well as possible--"I'm very fussy about that."

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