Music: For Originality

Serge Koussevitzky had retired as conductor of the Boston Symphony Orchestra, but not as a friend of music. Last week the Library of Congress received a gift of more than $100,000 from the wealthy, 75-year-old conductor, to be used for commissioning original compositions. The library was also establishing a Serge Koussevitzky Foundation Music Collection, consisting of manuscripts of 35 works commissioned by Koussevitzky since 1942. Among them: Benjamin Britten’s opera, Peter Grimes, Bela Bartok’s Concerto for Orchestra, Darius Milhaud’s Symphony No. 2, Aaron Copland’s Symphony No. 3, Arnold Schoenberg’s Survivor from Warsaw, Ode, by Igor Stravinsky, Marc Blitzstein’s opera, Regina, which last week closed a Broadway run of 56 performances.