Music: Flowery Field

When Leopold Stokowski flicked his baton in Philadelphia 20 years ago, he had no player more responsive than a handsome blond Dutchman who sat hugging his cello between his knees. Hans Kindler was back in Philadelphia last week, this time as a guest on Stokowski’s podium, waving his own commanding stick. He had returned to his oldtime colleagues as an experienced, full-fledged conductor. But he had done more than achieve a conductor’s technique. Despite Depression he had succeeded in planting an orchestra in Washington, D. C., making it grow and flower.

The Capital was considered a barren field for music when Kindler went there five years ago. But the affable Dutchman quickly made friends with people who became his sponsors, labored tirelessly over a disjointed body of players who badly needed work. From its feeble beginnings the orchestra has grown fast. First winter there were 87 guarantors. Now there are 1,600. First concerts had programs which were not too difficult to play, easy to digest. Conductor Kindler has waxed bolder as his audiences waxed larger, plans for this season a rich Brahms festival with Pianist Myra Hess.

At first it seemed brazenly ambitious for Washington to name an untried orchestra the National Symphony. But this season Conductor Kindler and his board of directors will try to make it live up to its name. Plans call for it to travel more extensively than other U. S. orchestras, begin this year by playing in Canada, New England, through the South.