Music: Season’s Overture

Simultaneously last week in Boston and in Philadelphia batons flicked into the air, releasing the music that marked the overture to the 1936-37 season. In Boston, Beacon Hillers, not content merely to clap their gloved hands, stood in deference to Conductor Sergei Koussevitzky who gravely bowed his thanks, peaked the afternoon with a peerless performance of Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony.

For 24 years the conductor’s stand in Philadelphia has been a throne for Leopold Stokowski. Last winter King Stokowski decided that he wanted more time for “research,” more personal freedom than a conductor’s routine duties permit. Result was that the Philadelphia Orchestra authorities had to choose another conductor for the bulk of this season, picked Eugene Ormandy, 36, pale, small, blond Hungarian who for the past four years has been leader of the Minneapolis Symphony.—

Young Eugene Ormandy walked briskly into the Philadelphia limelight last week, hopped onto the Stokowski throne and in a determined, businesslike manner commanded attention for two Bach transcriptions, arranged by Lucien Cailliet, a jolly bespectacled Frenchman, known by Philadelphians as one of their regularclarinetists. After Cailliet’s Bach came Mozart’s Fourth Violin Concerto with Fritz Kreisler as soloist, forerunning such headliners as Josef Hofmann, Sergei Rachmaninoff, Kirsten Flagstad, Vladimir Horowitz, Mischa Levitzki, Jascha Heifetz, Lawrence Tibbett, Artur Schnabel, all sure bait for customers not altogether sure of a youthful new conductor. Fritz Kreisler’s spell was sure, while Ormandy kept courteously to the background for the 61-year-old fiddler who, according to his irrepressible wife last week, “would be good if he would only practice.” Ormandy ‘s strongest test came with Schubert’s Seventh Symphony which, though it left him dripping with perspiration, showed a surprising authority over the Stokowski players, meticulous care for detail and phrasing, a lyric gift keenly adapted to Schubert’s own sense of song.

_ This week the big orchestras in Cleveland, Cincinnati and Chicago will start their seasons, under such proven leaders as Polish Artur Rodzinski, British Eugene Goossens and square old Frederick Stock, born a German but for many a year a proud Chicago institution. St. Louis’ hopes are high again for a series of concerts under Vladimir Golschmann, the sleek Franco-Russian who has built himself a strong Missouri following. The Los Angeles Philharmonic was driving for money last week and awaiting the return of towering Otto Klemperer. SanFrancisco stages its opera season first, but by midwinter the rejuvenated symphony will be playing again under the beneficent command of Pierre Monteux. The New York Philharmonic, bereft of Arturo Toscanini, has postponed its season’s opening until November when John Barbirolli, an obscure young Englishman so far as the U. S. is concerned, will take over the first ten weeks. Barbirolli’s appointment has been frowned upon by many a Philharmonic subscriber who may soon be convinced that he is either the season’s dead flop or its dark horse.

With the season’s overture last week greatest curiosity hinged on the success of Eugene Ormandy, starting a 61-concert engagement which should show what he can do with one of the world’s three great orchestras.— Even 46 years ago Eugene Ormandy’s father would have been willing to prophesy spectacular results. Ten years before Eugene was born Father Ormandy, a dentist in Budapest, was determined to have a musical son, eventually married and named his boy Jeno (Hungarian for Eugene) after Jeno Hubay, famed Hungarian violinist. Young Jeno Ormandy was given an eight-size fiddle when he was scarcely able to toddle. At 4, he interrupted a concert because the soloist played an F sharp in stead of an F natural. At 7, Jeno Ormandy was a prodigy, giving concerts on his own.

At 21 he arrived in the U. S., inveigled by the promise of a profitable tour.

At 21 Eugene Ormandy also learned how it felt to be hungry. His high-sounding tour, thanks to unscrupulous managers, petered to nothing. He tramped the streets of Manhattan, finally landed work fiddling far back in the Capitol cinemansion orchestra. Suddenly, at the Capitol, luck broke for him. The conductor was ill and with next-to-no notice young Ormandy stepped onto the stand, picked up a baton and directed Tchaikovsky’s Fourth Symphony from memory. That baton, now nearly 15 years old, has served Ormandy well. He used it for radio programs, took it to Philadelphia when he was suddenly called to pinch-hit for Arturo Toscanini, took it to Minneapolis where a conductor was needed to substitute when the late Henri Verbrugghen was ailing. In Minneapolis the baton grew thin with wear, but with it Eugene Ormandy made a run-down orchestra sound fresh and vital, while at the same time he kept on giving parties with childish enthusiasm, staying up well into the morning to pore over scores.

In Philadelphia last week Eugene Ormandy used the long old-fashioned baton that first brought him luck. At rehearsals, where he persistently wears a faded blue sweater, he made more friends when he called out to the players by name. Philadelphia reporters complain because King Stokowski is too high & mighty, too mysterious about his plans, too set on manufacturing his own publicity. Conductor Ormandy treated reporters like equals last week, gave great credit to his wife, Steffy Goldner, a harpist who was for many years the one female member of the New York Philharmonic.

Conductor Ormandy plans to play several new Hungarian works this winter.

But he likes to call himself a U. S. conductor rather than an Hungarian. Despite his transplanting Conductor Ormandy speaks with little accent—much less than the dynamic, go-getting Stokowski who, though half Polish, was born and bred in London and for the past 30 years has lived in the U. S.

*King Stokowski found relief from routine last spring during the Philadelphia Orchestra’s cross-country tour (TIME, March 27). He then stopped long enough in Hollywood to appear in Paramount’s The Big Broadcast of 1937 (see >-67), along with Funnyman Jack Benny, the moronic radio team of Burns & Allen, Jazzman Kenny Goodman and his Swing Band. The Big Broadcast of 1937 had its Philadelphia premiere lastweek, but Conductor Stokowski’s personal appearance was canceled at the request of the Musicians Union of which he is a member. —The world’s three foremost orchestras, so rated almost unanimously by critics, are the New York Philharmonic, the Boston Symphony and the Philadelphia Orchestras.