Youth Orchestra

Of all the big-name, foreign-name maestros who lead U. S. symphony orchestras, the most typically, most restlessly American is a British-born Irish-Pole: Leopold Antony Stokowski. Bored with the daily routine of polishing up well-known classics, Stokowski long ago jumped the fence of the conventional musical pasture and wandered far afield. He rewrote symphonic oomph into Bach fugues, started adding weird electrical instruments to his orchestra, played the Communist Internationale at a Philadelphia symphony concert. When, four years ago, Stokowski retired from the chief conductorship of the Philadelphia Orchestra and went to Hollywood to make movies, Philadelphia conservatives sighed with relief, but agreed sadly that the Orchestra would never be quite the same without him.

Last winter platinum-haired Maestro Stokowski announced that he would form an orchestra of young Americans that could stand up to the best symphonies in the country. Musicasters thought he was just huffing & puffing. But Stokowski meant it, every syllable.

Three weeks ago, in Atlantic City, he gathered 60-odd youths and 20 maidens he had picked for his Youth Orchestra, started rehearsing them night & day, at $50 apiece a week. Atlantic City's Mayor Thomas D. Taggart Jr. gave them free lodgings at the city's swankest hotels. To season his unbaked orchestra, Stokowski added the merest pinch (18 men) of experienced Philadelphia Orchestra men, thus reducing its 100% U. S. content by about 1%. By the time he was through rehearsing he had fired a couple of woodwinds, had cajoled, scolded, flattered the rest into efficient adoration. To thank Mayor Taggart for the free bed & board, Stokowski led his youths in a sidewalk serenade in front of the mayor's house, playing the stuffing out of John Philip Sousa's Manhattan Beach, El Capitan and Semper fidelis, Hail, Hail the Gang's All Here.

Last week, as Atlantic City sweltered under the year's record heat (98DEG), the almost ail-American Youth Orchestra gave its first concert. Five thousand sunburned boardwalkers listened, quietly sweating in the municipal Convention Hall. As the healthy-looking, white-clad youngsters swung into a tricky Bach Fugue in G Minor with veteran ease, many of the audience began to think they sounded remarkably like an outfit they had heard before: Stokowski's Philadelphia Orchestra. What with pretty blondes, earnestly tooting their trombones and horns, they looked very different. The 14-year-old Negro Trumpeter William B. Homer (TIME, June 24) took his high notes like John Peel.

By the time the orchestra had finished Brahms's First Symphony, the audience was well away. Only once or twice did the youngsters wobble a little. Critics were inclined to put down a good deal of their oomph to Stokowski's credit. But as .they packed up their fiddles and horns to start their tour of South America, via Baltimore, Washington and Manhattan, even the severest critic had to admit that Leopold Antony Stokowski in two small weeks had whipped together an orchestra that could already claim sixth or seventh place* among the 17 top-flight symphonies of the U. S.

* Top rankers: Boston Symphony, New York Philharmonic-Symphony, Philadelphia Orchestra, NBC Symphony, Chicago Symphony, Cleveland Orchestra.

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