On to Scandinavia

The Detroit Symphony is no longer making music; Board President Henry H. Reichhold folded the orchestra last year (TIME, Sept. 26). But last week Detroit had another orchestra that was making news as well as music.

Detroit's Scandinavian Symphony Orchestra actually goes back some 20 years. Early in its history the late motor magnate William S. Knudsen, who liked to relax with his Scandinavian friends, gave them a bass viol. The orchestra had no musician to play it, but that was fixed in a hurry. Violinist Chris Marck was tapped because he had a car large enough to carry a bass viol.

The musicians, during the day teachers, carpenters, painters and salesmen, went on playing for their own pleasure at the Ionic Temple. Before long, so many people dropped in to listen that the players decided to start giving concerts. They gave them Scandinavian style. During intermissions the musicians would step down from the stage, mingle with the guests. After the concert, there would be coffee, cakes, sometimes a dance. Over the years the orchestra grew in size from 36 to 75; when they got a regular conductor, Vienna-born Eduard Werner, they began to grow in proficiency. In recent years their weekly Sunday-night concerts in a 1,600-seat hall in Detroit's Masonic Temple have been attended by enough people to pay costs and put $5,000 in the treasury.

Last week Detroit's Scandinavian Symphony musicians were up to really big doings. They moved into the Masonic Temple's 4,500-seat main auditorium, and more than half the seats were filled. They also pulled in some new musicians to build the orchestra up to a big-sounding 94 pieces. They bowed and blew their way through Howard Hanson's Romantic Symphony No. 2, then wound things up with resounding performances of Grieg's Piano Concerto in A Minor and Sibelius' Finlandia. As usual, they mingled with the audience afterward, but this time they had something special to talk about. With the proceeds from their concert, 70 of them would climb aboard a Stratocruiser in two weeks, take off, kit & caboodle, for a two-month tour of Scandinavia.

Twenty-nine concerts have already been booked in Sweden, Norway and Denmark. For one Copenhagen concert, they thought they had a guest conductor all lined up: amateur musician King Frederik IX of Denmark, who was quite interested in the whole idea.

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