Halfway in St. Louis

Nineteen years ago. when Vladimir Golschmann first picked up the baton of the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra, he hardly seemed the man St. Louisans would choose for a permanent conductor. He was Parisian to his tapering fingertips; St. Louis was used to a rich German accent in its music. In Paris, Golschmann had been a champion of the upstart modernists known as the French Six.* hardly a recommendation for a post in a city devoted to Mozart, Wagner and Brahms.

And he was only 37, almost an unripe youngster to be conducting one of the oldest orchestras in the U.S.*

Yet somehow Conductor Golschmann and St. Louis got along fine. Now that Serge Koussevitzky and the Boston Symphony have parted company after 25 years, Golschmann's 19 years in St. Louis make him the most permanent conductor in the U.S.

No Trouble. From the beginning, Golschmann had met St. Louis halfway: he kept right on championing new music but he also worked hard to increase his command of the classics St. Louis loved.

He quickly made a hit with his musicians. Slightly slack after four years of guest conductors, they needed work and polishing; Golschmann gave them both without scraping their tender feelings. Says one musician: "Golschmann gets good discipline without blowing his top."

The town's businessmen found him good company and a good talker--even able to discuss the ups & downs of the St. Louis Cardinals. And he picked up poker fast. Says one card crony: "He's too reckless to be a good player. But he sure puts a lot of life in a game." He also kept his ties with Paris, went there almost every summer and brought back both new scores and new art. St. Louisans soon learned to take pride in his collection of contemporary art which includes, among other things, some two dozen Picassos.

"No Race." Golschmann has toured his orchestra over a good deal of the U.S., but has bided his time about taking on Manhattan and Manhattan critics. "There is no race," he kept saying. "We'll go to New York when I think we can give a good concert." Last week, midway on the orchestra's 70th anniversary tour, Golschmann and the St. Louis played Manhattan's Carnegie Hall for the first time. They proved they could give as good a concert as any music lover would want to hear.

Conducting with a minimum of gestures, like a man who is sure after 19 years that his musicians know just what he wants from them, he played a glowing, smoothly powered performance of the Mozart Symphony No. 40. He showed off the colors of his orchestra's palette with a new razzle-dazzle piece called Magic Manhattan by his Paris friend Manuel Rosenthal (now conductor of the Seattle Symphony), finished with the spirited dances from Falla's Three-Cornered Hat. Even the Manhattan critics conceded that the sensitivity and sonority of St. Louis' band measured up mighty close with the East's big three: the Boston, the Philadelphia and the New York Philharmonic-Symphony.

* Milhaud, Durey, Auric, Honegger, Poulenc, Tailleferre.

* The St. Louis Symphony claims to be the U.S.'s second oldest, dates its origin from the St. Louis Choral Society of 1880, which added an orchestra two years later. St. Louis' claim is stoutly resisted by Boston, whose symphony got started in 1881. The U.S.'s oldest: the New York Philharmonic-Symphony (1842).

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