Cincinnati

Fritz Reiner has closed his first season as Conductor of the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra, with many tunes of praise following him. Mr. Reiner has displayed a full measure of lively talent as an interpreter of music and a director of musicians, and has in addition shown much capacity as a program maker--it takes creative imagination to get up an interesting list of compositions for an evening. Take his last "popular" program, perhaps the most difficult kind to put together. His orchestral pieces were: the overture of The Secret of Suzanne, Ballet Suite from Sylvia, the Nutcracker Suite, the Blue Danube Waltz. Certainly this concoction of dance and lightness is " popular" enough, and yet--unlike most popular programs--it will not chase away the music-satiated cognoscenti.

If you were looking for the greatly sought after "human touch," you would find it not so much in Reiner as in his pleasant wife. Mrs. Reiner is the daughter of the Hungarian soprano, Etelka Gerster. Old timers will remember Etelka Gerster as a young soprano who sang in America for a season, and, with a measureless beauty of voice, appeared to be on the road to the greatest glory. Then--suddenly--she lost her voice and was not heard of again. It appears that she lost her voice during the illness that followed the birth of her daughter, the present Mrs. Reiner. The mother did not tell her daughter of this, but with a strange anxiety turned the child's bent toward singing, determined to realize in her the graces of song of which the child had deprived her. One day, when the girl was half grown, an angry maid taunted her bitterly with having caused the ruin of her mother's voice. Still mother and daughter could not bring themselves to speak of the theme that had been hidden, and the woman died with the silence unbroken. The daughter became a singer, but did not follow her art for more than a little while. She renounced it for a home and family.