Music: The Boston’s New Boss

For 13 years, audiences attending the weekly concerts of the Boston Symphony had stared at the unruly, silvering thatch of Conductor Charles Munch; for 25 years before that, the thatch had been that of Conductor Serge Koussevitzky. Last week, when the Boston appeared at Manhattan’s new Philharmonic Hall, the man on the podium was Erich Leinsdorf—thatchless and in impeccable control of his orchestra. Few who listened doubted that one of the most distinguished eras in the orchestra’s history had begun.

Serge Koussevitzky played on the Boston with Slavic ardor, kindling it to its best efforts in Russian works or in the epic grandeurs of Beethoven and Sibelius. Charles Munch tuned its voice to the French composers, infusing it with a certain Gallic grace. Leinsdorf, 50, is Viennese-born but internationally bred, and he will presumably make the Boston speak a more international tongue—well-modulated, clear and precise. Although a great orchestra does not change its accent overnight, the Boston played with wonderful clarity and precision last week, responding to Leinsdorf’s tick-tock beat with hair-trigger reflexes. The orchestra was installed on risers introduced by Leinsdorf to get a better integrated sound, and it was apparent from front row to rear that the men were emotionally “up” as well—for their new conductor as much as for the new hall.

Controlled Nostalgia. There was scant surprise in Boston when Leinsdorf was appointed Munch’s successor; he had already made an excellent impression on both orchestra and public in guest appearances. If there was surprise elsewhere, it was only that he would be willing to give up the opera conducting that has been such an important part of his career. But despite the fact that he had started in opera—first at Salzburg, later at the Metropolitan Opera, to which he was invited in 1937—Leinsdorf found when the Boston invitation came that “my nostalgia for opera is well controlled.”

Control, in fact, has always been a Leinsdorf hallmark—and it has continued to be in the few months since he moved with his wife and five children to a Boston suburb. A man who feels “at home in the great classical tradition,” he has so far announced no drastic new programming plans, has even declined to announce all the programs for this season (“I would like to retain the woman’s privilege of changing my mind”). He would like the Boston at Tanglewood to commission and play more works for small groups—for the very practical reason that “more and more far-out composers are writing for small groups now and not for the orchestra at all.”

“Quite a Band.” Leinsdorf’s extraordinarily rapid ability to assimilate new scores has already amazed his orchestra: a week before he had to lead the Boston through Samuel Barber’s intricate new Piano Concerto (see above), he had not received a complete score, a hazard he dismissed as being part of “musical tradition.” Just before leading the orchestra in Philharmonic Hall, Leinsdorf conducted Walter Piston’s Symphony No. 7 in Boston, rehearsing it for the first time purely from memory. Said an astounded Piston: “I wasn’t prepared for a man to know my score better than I did.”

At the first Leinsdorf rehearsal of the orchestra, according to a visitor, it “played like a million dollars,” and its new conductor commented happily: “It’s quite a band.” Indeed, it is more of a band than Leinsdorf has ever had before: his career with the Cleveland Orchestra, to which he was invited in 1943, was interrupted by the war, and in the postwar years he moved about considerably, from the Rochester Philharmonic to the Met to guest-conducting chores all over. The delight of Boston concertgoers these days is that in the Boston Symphony, Leinsdorf has at last found an instrument worthy of his great skills.