Music: Music Farm

Many U. S. music schools (e.g., Curtis,Juilliard, Eastman) maintain their own student orchestras. Yet, when new graduates of these schools try to get jobs with first-rate orchestras, they are generally turned away for lack of experience. In 1920, a red-headed teacher of music theory named Franklin Robinson finally realized that, because of this small but important difference between a music-school graduate and a full-fledged professional, U. S. symphony orchestras were packed with Europeans. Patriotic Teacher Robinson hastened to the late Mrs. E. H.Harriman, asked her to back him in the organization of a symphony orchestra that would train and place promising graduate students. Mrs. Harriman promptly took him up, gave him full charge of the musical end, and rounded up for her management boards as imposing a collection of Social Register names as ever decorated the Metropolitan Opera lists. In 1930 Mrs. Harriman dropped put (reason: Depression) and the association was reorganized under the presidency of Mrs. Mary Gary, socialite, music-loving daughter of music-loving Harry Harkness Flagler. By last week, when the National Orchestral Association gave its first concert of the new training season, it had won its place as a unique organization, invaluable to U. S. music.

The National Orchestral Association will give five more concerts this season. Because students naturally are not paid union wages, no admission can be charged. To meet the present $60,000 budget, young Manhattan socialites gladly do office work, solicit contributions, sell memberships at prices ranging from $1 to $5,000. Of the 130 young men and women who comprise the orchestra, many are on scholarships, pay as little as $1 a year tuition, and especially needy students receive money for rent and clothing. Conductor of the association is tall, slim Violist Leon Barzin (TIME, July 31, 1933), 37, who gathers the students thrice weekly in Carnegie Hall Chamber Music room for rehearsals, works them to a frazzle for two hours and a half, shouts at them when they play badly. He has been conductor since 1930. Though Conductor Barzin does not promise to place every student he accepts, since last April the association has farmed out to symphony orchestras about 47 neophytes.

As they got under way last week, conductors throughout the U. S. had their eyes on the National Orchestral Association. As competently as could be expected from a group of young musicians in which the turnover is fast and rehearsals are few, they played the Franck Symphony, and, with Pianist Muriel Kerr, the fourth Beethoven Concerto. More eyes will be turned on them next month when they play the world premiere of Jacob Weinberg’s Gettysburg Address, a symphonic ode to the text of Abraham Lincoln’s immortal speech.