Music: Ladies’ Band

At the White House not long ago Anna Eleanor Roosevelt Roosevelt received a strange and unfamiliar guest. Her name was Antonia Brico. She had a determined manner and dark blazing eyes. Her purpose was to interest the President’s wife in a woman’s symphony orchestra. Mrs. Roosevelt was so impressed that last week four Brico concerts were announced, the first to be given in Manhattan Feb. 18.

Antonia Brico is a conductor who, like helter-skelter Ethel Leginska, affects a jacket which resembles an old-fashioned Prince Albert.* She grew up in Oakland, Calif., studied for five years with Karl Muck in Germany. She has conducted successfully in Berlin, Hamburg,Manhattan. Women proclaim her a genius. Men say that she is an excellent musician who has a clean, sure beat.

* Both Leginska and Brico have been accused of aping masculine attire. Fact is, the shoulder straps of a conventional evening-gown could never survive an evening of strenuous conducting.