Music: Symphonic Auction

It takes showmanship nowadays to keep even so great an orchestra as the Philadelphia Symphony afloat. But showman-ship is just what Conductor Leopold (“Prince”) Stokowski has a great deal of. His blond mop waving proudly, his piercing eye darting sharply among dowagers and debutantes, he was the stage manager of a show one evening last week in Philadelphia’s Bellevue-Stratford Hotel. The evening’s serious business was to auction off 600 unsold season concert tickets but before the hammer began falling and donors began digging down, a rare collection of talent was exhibited.

In striking contrast were Kate Smith, Washington, D. C.’s tremendous contribution to radio, and that other Washington musician, small, blue-eyed William Hartman Woodin, Secretary of the Treasury. Young William Curtis Bok, who presided at the speakers’ table, .asked Maestro Stokowski and his men to play Mr. Woodin’s Covered Wagon suite. The Secretary of the Treasury beamed modestly throughout the performance, then made a little speech: “When I heard my poor music so wonderfully played by Prince Stokowski and his men, I thought, ‘There is music in the Treasury and, I hope, harmony.’ . . . We are pioneering with a wonderful leader. … I see before us a river of sunshine and happiness.”

Composer Deems Taylor conducted some of his own music, managing his pince-nez with one hand, his baton with the other. Efrem Zimbalist fiddled. Then Kate Smith sang the big siren song from Samson & Delilah while Stokowski, a bit unnerved, conducted for her.

When Lawyer Benjamin H. Ludlow, secretary of the Orchestra Association, at last mounted an auctioneer’s stand draped with a red sale-today flag, the bidding was prompt and generous. Debutantes went from table to table collecting written pledges. The players whose music was being auctioned lost some of their selfesteem, but the $17,000 which was raised restored half their last pay cut, gave 600 impoverished music students free tickets for the season.