Grofe's America

"I am not foolish enough to try to place myself in a class, for example, with Ravel and Sibelius, whom I admire tremendously," says Ferdinand Rudolph von Grofe ("Ferde Grofe"), "but there is a real place for my kind of music. Some time, when I get older--I am 44 now--I may try a strict symphony form, but in the meantime I am going on trying to describe America in music." The America of Ferde Grofe (pronounced Ferdy GroFay), plump onetime arranger for Paul Whiteman and for the past five years a highly successful semi-classical musician on his own, is bounded by Manhattan (Tabloid Suite), New Orleans (Mardi Gras), Hollywood (Hollywood Suite). It includes scenic wonders (Grand Canyon Suite} and clanging industry (Symphony in Steel). Last week a Carnegie Hall audience heard all these works played by a 40-piece orchestra headed by the composer in his debut as a concert conductor. The audience found Grofe's own jazzy, tuneful, descriptive music, as well as the numerous other works he played, good listening, often good for a laugh. The Symphony in Steel employed a siren and pneumatic drills. The Tchaikovskian Sob Sister from Tabloid Suite was neatly assembled, bu! Hollywood proved most successful, with the banging and scraping of carpenters and electricians, the ennui of "stand-ins." the barking of a director, a "Precision Routine" in which the percussion section drummed on its shoes with rhythmic ingenuity to suggest a dance routine. Always an adroit orchestrator (he scored George Gershwin's Rhapsody in Blue}, Composer Grofe had come far from the time when he used to add melodic shimmer to such Whiteman numbers as the Song of India and Chansonette. Best non-Grofean work was a deeply-felt Negro Heaven of Otto Cesana. The whole concert pleased even pontifical old William James Henderson of the New York Sun, who unbent to write: "Mr. Grofe presents 'paper' music; his orchestra does not consist of swing men, and never is there any attempt to 'frisk their whiskers.' Indeed it must be admitted that a good deal of the time they are just plain 'corny,' but when the notation calls for it they can make a reasonable approach to a jam session."

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