Music: Mid-Season

In Manhattan the winter music season was at its height, and a music lover with money for a couple of tickets could dazzle himself with his choices. If it was symphonies he cared for, he could take his pick of concerts by the New York Philharmonic-Symphony, the Boston Symphony, the Philadelphia Orchestra and the Israel Philharmonic, a sensitive, if not great, new orchestra making its first tour of the U.S. under the conductorship of Serge Koussevitzky and Leonard Bernstein. In midweek, the New York Philharmonic offered a program specially tempting to musical conservatives: the first installment of a four-week Brahms cycle, conducted by Bruno Walter.

It was a busy week at the opera, too. Among other things, the Met offered a new twin-bill production of Cavalleria Rusticana and Pagliacci. Not everybody was satisfied with the way Rudolf Bing & Co. went about streamlining the old favorites (see below), but the singing was good.

The Met and the symphonies together still accounted for less than half of the performances going on; as usual, the smaller halls were filled with so many trios, quartets, pianists, choruses and sopranos that even the dutiful New York Times didn’t try to cover them all. This week, with a Kirsten Flagstad Isolde and a Toscanini performance of Verdi’s Requiem (see below), looked just as dazzling. In short, Manhattan was in midseason.