Summer Concerts

Summer concertgoers, a more informal, comfortable, carefree throng than the wintertime concert public, last week began strolling of an evening to cool parks beneath the July moon to hear fine music in the open air. Chief attractions were:

Philadelphia. "An evening with one of the world's most noted symphony orchestras for 22 cents," was the sales-cry of backers of the Philadelphia Orchestra's first season of summer concerts nightly in shady Robin Hood Dell, Fairmount Park. For 24 concerts tickets sold at $5. Besides Conductor Leopold Stokowski and Assistant Conductor Alexander Smallens, guest maestros will include Karl Krueger (also at the Hollywood Bowl) and Josef Alexander Pasternack. Albert Coates and Willem van Hoogstraten will alternate as conductors between Philadelphia and Manhattan (see below). From Berlin will come Ernst Knoch, famed conductor of Wagnerian music.

Hollywood Bowl. Alfred Hertz, who conducted the first of the "Symphonies under the Stars" in 1922, led off the first week. Following him will be Karl Krueger, conductor of Seattle's Symphony Orchestra. Later to Hollywood will go the great Italians Bernardino Molinari and Pietro Cimini; and Enrique Fernandez Arbos of Madrid. Soloists include: Margaret Matzenauer, Elsa Alsen, Richard Crooks, Kathleen Parlow, Percy Grainger, Alfred Wallenstein. Ballet-arrangers: Mme Albertina Rasch and famed Japanese dance-master Michio Ito.

Manhattan. Second oldest of U. S. summer concert programs (13th season) is the Philharmonic-Symphony series held in Lewisohn Stadium. Notable on the program of eight weeks will be the "Launcelot" symphony of Albert Coates, conductor of the London Symphony, which will be given its premiere under his baton. Composer Coates, whose one-act opera Samuel Pepys took musical Munich by storm last winter (TIME, Jan. 6), will conduct during the fourth, fifth and sixth weeks; Conductor Willem van Hoogstraten of the Portland (Ore.) Symphony Orchestra, the first three and last two. First-nighters last week flocked to hear, not Wagner, not Strauss, not Tchaikovsky, though their names bulked large as old favorites, but French Maurice Ravel's cumulative, dynamic symphonic sensation, Bolero.

Detroit. While Philadelphia, Hollywood, and Manhattan were turning out for their summer's opening concerts. Detroit's Symphony Orchestra was well into its third week of playing. Under the baton of Victor Kolar, Conductor Ossip Gabrilowitsch's able associate, the Detroit musicians drew large throngs to the "shell" stadium on famed Belle Isle.

San Francisco. The Summer Symphony Association fortnight ago began its fifth season of ten concerts, not in the open, but in the newly decorated Civic Auditorium. On the dais, baton striking swift designs in the air, was Conductor Bernardino Molinari. Boldly, brilliantly. he led his musicians through the intricacies of the Don Giovanni overture, great Beethoven's great Eroica, Dukas' The Sorcerer's Apprentice, the prelude to Die Meistersinger.

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