Music: A Wee Drap o’ Music

“We’re puttin’ on a wee drap o’ music an’ drama, ye ken,” explained a kilted Scot, “but yer no’ gettin’ awa’ wi’ it all as a gift . . .”

In this gay but canny mood, Edinburgh last week welcomed some 40,000 to its second annual, three-week “wee drap o’ music an’ drama.” Edinburgh had spent $400,000 to outdo even the prewar glamor of Austria’s Salzburg.

For six months, gardeners had been nursing thousands of plants, arranged in West Princes Street Gardens, to spell out in brilliant flowers the names of Chopin, Mozart and Beethoven. On flag-festooned streets, shops were chock-full of tartans and souvenirs. And Edinburgh’s crammed hotels had wangled enough extra rations of Scotch for more than a wee drap o’ that for everyone, too, at $1.10 a nip.

The Royal Mile. On opening day, the clear, crisp morning air throbbed with the wail of bagpipers from the grounds of Edinburgh Castle. By midafternoon, spectators had jammed the “Royal Mile” between Holyrood Palace and Edinburgh Castle to watch the ceremonial parade to dour St. Giles’s Cathedral, led by the Lord Lyon King of Arms, in heraldic tabard, looking as if he had stepped off a playing card. In the cavernous cathedral, with a blast of trumpets, the festival was formally opened—a festival that would hear, before it was over, some 1,500 musicians, including seven orchestras, four choirs, four chamber ensembles, and an opera company.

That night, in huge Usher Hall, which looks like a railway station, the first of 40 orchestral concerts burst into life under the talented baton of Eduard van Beinum (TIME, April 12). Next night Amsterdam’s famed Concertgebouw Orchestra was led by France’s silver-haired Charles Münch (Koussevitzky’s heir in Boston).

While the big orchestras thundered at night in Usher Hall, hundreds were braving the morning chill in dingy Freemasons’ Hall to hear, at 11 a.m. each day, music played by a natty, pug-nosed Englishman named Boyd Neel, 43. With his “little orchestra” of ten violins, four violas, four cellos and three double basses, Neel was producing delicate performances of 18th Century and contemporary music that bigger orchestras couldn’t hope to match. He was clearly the hit of Edinburgh’s first week.

Medicine v. Mozart. U.S. music fans have heard Boyd Neel’s orchestra only on records, if at all. Last year his 21-piece string group crossed the U.S. en route to Australia, but they flew across the U.S. in silence on a world tour, with their instruments in bond.

As a boy, Boyd Neel wanted to be a concert pianist, but gave up after one school concert. He studied medicine, got his first job in 1929 as house surgeon in London’s St. George Hospital. Meanwhile he had taught himself music theory, joined an amateur orchestra for summer tours in Europe. At Salzburg, he once persuaded Bruno Walter to let him sit in his orchestra, to study Walter’s ways.

He decided that there were not enough little orchestras. He rounded up 18 students, told them, “Let’s play for six months and then give a concert. If it’s a success, we’ll go on. If not, we’ll stop.” Five minutes after their first concert, Neel got phone calls from both the BBC and Decca Record Co. Ltd. (for whom he still records). Next morning, Neel gave up medicine for Mozart. During the war, however, he stowed away his baton, to help fit artificial limbs on amputees.