Overture

A baton whisked into the air last week, cut a circle or two to release the sombre sounds of Schumann's Manfred overture and in Manhattan an important audience settled itself ecstatically to hear Arturo Toscanini conduct the season's first concert of the Philharmonic-Symphony. The occasion itself, anyone would have said, demanded more preliminary pomp. Long has the Philharmonic angled for an option on the services of Toscanini. Only this year has he come to begin the season and to conduct the major portion. But when last week his audience stood proudly to greet him and began the expected ovation, the little man quashed it with a quick bow, turned his back, tapped smartly for attention and began the business of the evening. The Overture to Byron's Manfred, the Don Quixote of Richard Strauss and Beethoven's Seventh Symphony--these comprised the Teutonic program which the Great Italian chose to deliver. And then, as if to justify his choice, he made of the flaccid Manfred a deeply despairing hero and touched the bemuddled Cervantes knight with the tenderness of a great comedian. Not until the Beethoven, though, did he have material mighty enough for his greatest virtuosity. Ask any Manhattanite who is the world's greatest conductor and the answer, almost infallibly, will be Arturo Toscanini. Ask a Philadelphian and the answer will be, just as surely, Leopold Stokowski. Hence satisfaction, as blissful if not quite as novel, attended the first Philadelphia Orchestra concert given last week, a day after the Philharmonic's.

Like the Italian Toscanini, the Russian Stokowski chose German music. Like Toscanini with his Beethoven, Stokowski has always had unseen powers over Brahms' First Symphony. Brahms then, followed by worthy excerpts from the Wagnerian Ring made of his first concert a surging translucent affair.

Strange and unfamiliar to Stokowski must have seemed the Academy of Music two days later as he walked through its sombre emptiness to the stage. Strange and unfamiliar must he have appeared to his orchestra-members, in his brown baggy golf clothes instead of his usual impeccable black. For it was no rehearsal, even though the hushed silence which greeted him was only that of tiers upon tiers of vacant seats. Then with strains of Bach and Mozart he gave a program unique for him, his first before a microphone and unseen listeners, his first to be paid for by advertising (Philadelphia Storage Battery Co.).

Finally, to render the romance of Tannhauser overture, he unromantically removed his collar and coat. The hour over, he leaned closer to the microphone, asked in effect: "Do radio listeners like such music? If not, let me know and I'll broadcast no more concerts."

Other major U. S. orchestras, so classified on the basis of schedules, budgets and excellence, begin their seasons soon. They are, with their conductors, the Boston Symphony, Serge Koussevitzky; the Chicago Symphony, Frederick Stock; the Cleveland Orchestra, Nikolai Sokoloff; the Cincinnati Symphony, Fritz Reiner; the Detroit Symphony, Ossip Gabrilowitsch, conductor, Victor Kolar, associate conductor and Eugene Goossens and Bernardino Molinari, guest conductors; the Los Angeles Philharmonic, Artur Rodzinski beginning his first season as conductor; the Minneapolis Symphony, Henri Verbrugghen; the Portland (Ore.) Symphony. Willem van Hoogstraten; the Rochester Philharmonic, beginning its first season in association with the New Civic Orchestra, Eugene Goossens; the St. Louis, Enrique Fernandez Arbos, Bernardino Molinari, George Szell, Eugene Goossens, guest conductors; the San Francisco Symphony, Alfred Hertz, beginning his last season as conductor.

Important also will be concerts by the non-commercial American Orchestral Society, in Manhattan, under Conductor Cliffton Chalmers; by the Omaha Symphony, Sandor Harmati; the Seattle Symphony, Karl Krueger; the Syracuse Symphony, Vladimir Shavitch.

In Manhattan this winter may be heard also the new Manhattan Symphony, under Conductor Henry Hadley; the Conductorless Orchestra; and the Friends of Music which will have for the first time its own orchestra under Conductor Artur Bodanzky, who will devote to it his full time.