Home Sounds from Abroad

The U.S. had first seen Ernest Ansermet (rhymes with ah sir may) and his black, square-cut beard 32 years ago, conducting while Nijinsky danced. It was Ansermet who gave the U.S. its first taste of Stravinsky’s tart Petrouchka and Debussy’s heady L’Après-Midi d’un Faune,

As a young Swiss esthete among Paris’ musical Young Turks, he had conducted many an uproarious premiere of their raucous and startling works—as they seemed then. Stravinsky’s Les Noces, De Falla’s Le Tricorne, Ravel’s La Valse, Honegger’s Pacific 231 (which is dedicated to Ansermet) had first come to life under his baton. Between premieres and table-pounding talk with Picasso, Diaghilev, Prokofiev and Stravinsky (“a man of great culture—and the best businessman I ever knew”), Ansermet mastered the classics—without losing his appetite for the moderns.

A fortnight ago, a monkish, grey-bearded 64 but still hungry for new music, Ernest Ansermet was back in the U.S. He had come at the invitation of his friend Arturo Toscanini to conduct the NBC Symphony Orchestra in four concerts, and he had brought along a briefcase full of surprises. For his first concert, he wrenched the orchestra and three soloists through a jangling, abrasive concerto for harp, harpsichord, piano and strings by Swiss Composer Frank Martin. Last week, he pulled out another new work: the Symphony No. 5 of Czech Composer Bohuslav Martinu. Another surprise: a seldom-heard work by 91-year-old U.S. Expatriate Templeton Strong, who left for Switzerland some 50 years ago in a rage because he couldn’t get his music performed at home.

In Europe, with his own Orchestre de la Suisse Romande, Ansermet is a lively champion of U.S. composers, whose music he ranks with the best being written in the world today.

Ansermet had been the first to interest Stravinsky and Ravel in jazz, which he had picked up on his first U.S. tour. Now he is convinced that “the days of jazz are over. It has made its contribution to music. Now in itself it is merely monotonous.”