Music: Summer Nights (Cont’d)

To thousands of New Yorkers who on summer nights go to the Mall in Central Park, to the campus of New York University or to Prospect Park in Brooklyn to listen to Edwin Franko Goldman’s band, no tune is more familiar than his march, On the Mall. Well do they know its words, its lively chorus with breaks during which they whistle and sing la-la-la-la. One night last week the Goldman Band launched into On the Mall, but for once not under the baton of white-mopped Bandmaster Goldman. On the podium stood a dark, chunky little man in a white suit. He waved his arms in a vigorous if unorthodox beat. He smartly stopped the musicians in time for each whistle and la-la-la-la. Then New York’s music-loving Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia, son of an Army bandmaster, brought the march to its crashing close, took a bow.

Mayor LaGuardia’s début as conductor coincided with the 1,000th performance of the Goldman Band, founded in 1918 as New York’s first series of summer concerts. Bandmaster Goldman has never missed a concert and, with audiences of from 15,000 to 50,000, believes he has played to more people than anyone else in the world. Backed at first by a number of rich New Yorkers, the Goldman concerts later became the private benefaction of the Guggenheim family (copper), are now called the Daniel Guggenheim Memorial Concerts for the charitarian who died five years ago (TIME, Oct. 6, 1930). At last week’s celebration Mayor LaGuardia presented his city’s Certificate of Honor for Distinguished Service to modest, greying Widow Florence Guggenheim. Turning from her toward the audience and the band, the Mayor said: “Tonight you have heard and enjoyed, with the added opportunity to observe, the very acme of perfection in band music. When it is possible for a band to render a Bach fugue, then I want to congratulate you, Maestro Goldman, and your musicians. Just imagine Sebastian Bach hearing an organ, and back of every key a human being. If he could have heard it performed here tonight he would have said: ‘That is what I intended to do.’ “

Other news of midsummer music:

¶ Lohengrin opened the 15th season of opera in the Cincinnati Zoo, a six-week schedule assured this year by anonymous donations. As usual, the audience tittered at unexpected animal sounds—a loon calling as Lohengrin arrived on the stage with his papier-mache swan; a lion roaring just as King Henry dropped his chin for a deep bass note.

¶On the Esplanade by the Charles River in Boston, Arthur Fiedler opened the seventh season of concerts by Boston Symphony men. Governor James Michael Curley hyperbolically saluted “the finest musicians and the finest leader in the U. S.”

¶In Grant Park on Chicago’s lake front, the Chicago Symphony swung into For He’s a Jolly Good Fellow upon the appearance of James C. Petrillo, president of the Chicago Federation of Musicians and member of the city park board. Good Fellow Petrillo had arranged for two months of free concerts nightly. Besides performances by the Symphony under Frederick Stock, Eric De Lamarter and Gennaro Papi, he scheduled the Woman’s Symphony (Ebba Sundstrom), the Civic Opera Orchestra (Henry Weber) and eight bands.

¶ At the Sky Club, Bettis Field Airport, the Pittsburgh Symphony under Antonio Modarelli gave its first open air popular concert, drew such a crowd that its executive board met impromptu, immediately announced a second.

¶ Although Cellist-Conductor Hans Kindler has had trouble enough making a go of winter concerts with his four-year-old National Symphony in Washington, he determined to put on a summer season. He persuaded the National Park Service to shoulder one-third of the cost ($35,000). He hurdled union obstacles. From the Navy Department he begged and borrowed a coal barge which was towed up the Potomac, anchored by Arlington Memorial Bridge. On this was built a big grey acoustic shell. One night last week Conductor Kindler and his 80 musicians marched up gangplanks to the barge, played Wagner, Franck, Johann Strauss, Brahms, Tschaikovsky.

¶ Egg-bald, tangle-bearded Alfred Hertz and the San Francisco Symphony opened the tenth annual summer concerts in the Woodland Theatre at Hillsborough, Calif. These concerts are the intense concern of rich Mrs. Leonora Wood Armsby, friend of many a famed musician. From her experience as patron-director of the concerts, Mrs. Armsby has written a book. Musicians Talk in which she frequently refers to visitors at her home—Gabrilowitsch, Hertz, Tibbett, Molinari, Walter, Coates— as “the celebrities.” This summer’s Hillsborough celebrities: Richard Lert, Basil Cameron, Jose Iturbi.