Music: Choir in Russia

Led by the invincible Mrs. Harry Elstner Talbott, the 40 sedate young men and women who compose the Westminster Choir entered Leningrad last week. All were well versed in the Scriptures and in the art of singing (TIME, June 11). But without Mrs. Talbott they could never have been the first U. S. musical delegation to reach Soviet Russia. Dayton’s 70-year-old matriarch had opened her own purse generously; all last spring she bustled about Manhattan to get the backing of businessmen. Her reward last week was great. In Leningrad the audience cheered when the Choir began with a rousing “Internationale,” was pleased with nothing so much as its Negro spirituals.