Market

Last week, with the current season waning fast, musicians and musicians' managers concerned themselves with plans for next year. Like any other business, goes music in the U. S. Artists are the com- modities monopolized by a few wholesale managers who sell to retail or local managers who in turn sell concerts to the public. Last week many a sales letter went out from Manhattan wholesalers' offices. Some 25 musical salesmen conferred with local dealers directly, boasted of the talents of their particular artists, haggled over prices. From their sales results, from box-office returns of the past year were established certain salient facts:

That whereas local dealers are buying as much music as formerly they are neither willing nor in a position to pay the fees of a few years ago. Almost the only old-time top-fee artist definitely to hold his own is Violinist Fritz Kreisler. In the U. S. as the world over he stays the greatest drawing card. Second to him in the U. S. this year have presumably been Negro Tenor Roland Hayes and the Dancer Argentina. Pianist Sergei Rachmaninoff also commands top prices, full houses, but he gives few concerts now. Young Yehudi Menuhin is in his class.

Many big musical names have deteriorated in value in the past two years. John McCormack and Amelita Galli-Curci, though still big drawing cards, have lost considerable ground. Basso Feodor Chaliapin no longer "sells." His last minimum fee of $3,500 was too high to permit managers making money. Other names which count for less in dollars and cents are the Singers Frieda Hempel, Anna Case, Sophie Braslau, Louise Homer, Dusolina Giannini, Mabel Garrison, Reinald Werrenrath, Louis Graveure, Pianist Josef Lhevinne, Violinist Mischa Elman. Violinist Jascha Heifetz had also started to slip. The public found him cold, expressionless. But since his marriage to Cinemactress Florence Vidor his concert manner has warmed, his box-office value increased. Conversely, names which will be worth more next year are Negro Baritone Paul Robeson (TIME, Nov. 18) and Pianist Jose Iturbi (TIME, Dec. 30), the outstanding successes of the season; Singers Rosa Ponselle, Elisabeth Rethberg, Sigrid Onegin, Florence Austral, Lawrence Tibbett, John Charles Thomas, Pianist Vladimir Horowitz.

Between these two groups is a third which is relatively immune from box office inflation or deflation. Of this an outstanding example is Efrem Zimbalist* who, while not drawing the Kreisler crowds, is considered an almost perfect violinist. Others for whose talents there is a steady demand are Pianists Harold Bauer, Alfred Cortot, Ossip Gabrilowitsch, 'Cellist Pablo Casals, Guitarist Andres Segovia, Violinist Albert Spalding.

*Zimbalist, like other astute artists, sometimes alters his fee to fit the occasion. Recently, a Manhattan dowager telephoned him, bidding him play at one of her musicales. "And what, Mr. Zimbalist, will be your fee?' "Five thousand dollars, Madam." The dowager did not flinch. "And you under stand, Mr. Zimbalist, that you will not be expected to mix with the guests." "Ah, Madam, in that case it is only one thousand."

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