On the train from Cleveland to New York, Music Writer Barry Farrell sat back to enjoy a leisurely breakfast with a copy of Bruno Walter's book. Of Music and Music-Making. He had just turned to Chapter 3, titled "The Conductor," when a trainman passed by his table and peered over his shoulder.

Trainman: Are you planning to be a conductor? Farrell: No, I'm just writing about them for TIME.

Trainman: TIME! Is it going to be a big story? Farrell: Yes, a cover story.

Trainman: What's the name of the conductor who's going to be on the cover? Farrell: George Szell.

Trainman: I don't think I've heard of him. Where does he work out of? Farrell: Cleveland.

When he learned that the cover subject was not his kind of conductor, the trainman went on his disappointed way through the train. But Writer Farrell found, before he was through with this week's cover story, that George Szell was his kind of conductor. After long hours in concert halls and at the stereo set in his office listening to the great orchestras of the U.S., after warm conversations with the cover subject over, as Szell put it, "un bon p'ti' vin," Farrell wound up with "a new devotion--the Cleveland Orchestra."

Cover Artist Henry Koerner, who like Szell was born in Central Europe, sized up his subject as "a father, the ultimate dictator, a tyrant." The painter and conductor talked amiably in German and listened to recordings of the Cleveland Orchestra as the painting progressed. Koerner, who also did the drawings of orchestra members that appear with the cover story, found painting the conductor a "delightful project," partly because he could show the subject's hands as an expression of character. "When else,'' exulted Koerner, "would I have the opportunity to paint a stick--a magic wand--in the hand over the head?"

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.