Koussevitzky

Boston, the Hub, has made another revolution. Serge Koussevitzky, famed Russian conductor, a prophet of the new, a patron of the unknown, will direct the Boston Symphony this Winter. Last season it was Pierre Monteux, volcanic, sensational, whose introduction of Stravinsky's Sacre du Printemps was a dramatic event. Now comes a man whom they heralded in Moscow with bombs and cheers and acclaimed in Paris with appreciation even more explosive. What will he do? Great words thunder in the index.

"What I hope to do in America is to show the public that masterpieces of music as stirring, as beautiful _ as the greatest of the past are being written today. I will present, in Boston, music never heard before, music which exists only in manuscripts which I have in my keeping, music written by men now living who will rank as high a century from now as Mozart or Beethoven!" No enemy to Jazz is Koussevitzky. It is stated of him that in London one night, stopping at a supper-club for a bite, he heard some young Americans rendering their native melodies. He listened; his bite grew cold. "I like good music," said he.

Koussevitzky has always been more concerned with the reality of achievement than with the appearance of it. For diverse interests he substitutes his great and lonely passion; he indulges no hobbies, tolerates in himself no eccentricities. In countenance, he is grave; in dress and manner, he resembles a cosmopolitan man of business. Only his hands and eyes admit the implication that this business has to do with Art. He was born in Tver, in Northern Russia, and received his first employment as double bass in the Moscow Imperial Opera. He rose to become a conductor and toured Europe with his orchestra. Revolt he has always accepted; even Revolution, with red flags and black drums, did not stop his music. He gave concerts in deserted places, when it was so cold that the brass players had to wear mittens.

In France, he was famed as a hunter after talent and a friend of young composers. He introduced Paris to the works of several excelIent musician, hitherto unheard-of; his wife, known as one of the most charming women in Moscow, shared this interest. To her were dedicated the works of such young Russians as Scriabin and Stravinsky. With bread and meat she fed the inspiration of more than one hungry genius who discovered, during the War, that Art was long and food was short.

In spite of his amenity to what is untried, Koussevitzky takes no liberties with the classics. There is no trace of modernity in his reading of them, just as there is no affected classicism in his reading of the moderns. It is his theory that when one listens to a piece of music, one listens to a period of history, and if the background is anachronistic, one hears nothing. With scrupulous regard, he presents the works of the old masters as he believes they would wish them presented. Now he is looking for the American Beethoven.