The Personality Of Three Orchestras

New Zealand Listener, Volume 10, Issue 235, 24 December 1943, Page 20

The Personality Of Three Orchestras

6é RCHESTRAS are not wholly the product of their conductors," wrote Virgil Thompson, American composer and eonductor, in the New York Herald Tribune last October. "Their conductors train them and put them through their paces in public, but the conductor is one personality and the orchestra is another (in private life, a hundred others). A good orchestral concert is really more a duet than a domination. "Our three great Eastern ensembles, for instance-the Philadelphia, the Boston and the New York Philhar-monic-are as different from one another as the cities that created them and that forged them slowly into the image of each city’s intellectual ideals. Conductors from outside have been called in to aid this formation, and a few of these have left traces of their own taste on that of the cities they have worked for. But chiefly their functions have been to care for a precious musical organism, to watch over it, to perfect it in the observance of the musical amenities and to allow it to mature accerding to its own nature and in accordance with its community’s particular temperament. The conductor is never a static participant in such a process. He matures, too, in harmony with the community, if he stays a reasonable length of time, is nourished and formed by local ideals, becomes a part of the thing to which he has contributed his special abilities. "Serge Koussevitzky and Eugene Ormandy are cases in point of my thesis. They have been ripened and refined by their association with the Boston and the Philadelphia orchestras in a way that was not predictable at all during their previous careers. It was obvious always that both would go far, but it was not indicated to prophecy that Koussevitzky, the temperamental Slav, would become a master of orchestral understatement, or that Ormandy, the boyish and straightforward Central European, would become a sort of specialist of delicately equilibrated orchestral sensuality. These developments, I am sure, are as legitimately creditable to environmental influence as to any previously manifested characteristics. Contact with orchestras of powerful temperament end specific orientation, as well as responsibility to cities of ancient

and irreducible character — Boston, the intellectually elegant and urbane, Philadelphia, where everything, even intellectual achievement and moral pride, turns into a luxury-contact, conflict and collaboration between their strong European and the even stronger local traditions has given to these conductors their quality of being both the creature and the guiding hand of their own orchestras. Two Orchestras Compared "It is surprising (and most pleasant) to observe how two orchestras as accomplished as these can differ so completely in the kind of sounds they make. Boston makes thin sounds, like the Paris orchestras, thin and utterly precise, like golden wire and bright enamel. Nothing ever happens that isn’t clear. "The Philadelphia sonorities are less transparent, and the tonal balance is less stable. Because the sounds that make it up are all rounder and deeper and more human. They breathe; they seem almost to have sentience. "As a price of this vibrancy, however, the Philadelphia Orchestra is not always easy to conduct. It is probably the most sensitive orchestra in the world. The leader can get a fortissimo out of it by lifting a finger, and he can upset the whole balance of it by any nervousness. Boston: is tougher, more independent. Re-Educating The Philharmonic "Our Philharmonic is a horse of another colour, and one that has had far too many riders. It has been whipped and spurred for 40 years by guest conductors and by famous virtuosos with small sense of responsibility about the orchestra’s future or about its relation to our community’s culture. It has become erratic, temperamental, undependable, and in every way difficult to handle. "Mr. Rodzinski has undertaken to heal its neuroses. At least we presume that is what he has undertaken, because improvement is noticeable already in tonal transparency, and a faint blush seems to be appearing on the surface of the string sounds. Rhythmic co-ordina-tion, too, though far from normal, is definitely ameliorated, It is to be hoped sincerely that progress will continue. At present, its faults, like those of any spoiled child: or horse, are more easily definable than its qualities."

Conductors Are Cosmopolitan

F the men who conduct the 12 () sine American symphony orchestras, only one was born in the United States, Howard Hanson, conductor of the EastmanRochester Symphony Orchestra, who comes from the Middle West. The other conductors come from all parts of Europe: London (Eugene Goossens and John Barbirolli), Russia (Serge Koussevitzky and Fabien Sevitzky), Budapest (Eugene Ormandy and Fritz Reiner), Dalmatia (Arthur Rodzinski), Holland (Hans Kindler), Paris (Pierre Monteux), Italy (Arturo Toscanini), and Athens (Dimitri Mitropoulos). Their ages are interesting: Toscafini, the acknowledged superior of them all, is the senior in years, the only one of the 12 who was born before 1870; he is 76. Next comes Koussevitzky, who is 69; and Monteux, who is 68. Fritz Reiner is the only one in his ’fifties (he was born in 1888), and all the resteight of them-were born between 1893 and 1899, so that not one of them is under 44, but two-thirds of them are under 50. Youngest and Oldest The orchestras themselves are doubtless as cosmopolitan in their personnel as the ranks of their conductors, but their ages are miore varied. The oldest (the New York Philharmonic, 101 years old, the third oldest orchestra in the world), had the youngest of the 12 conductors, Barbirolli, when these progtammes were recorded, whereas the youngest orchestra (the NBC Symphony), had the oldest conductor, Toscanini, who conducted its first performance in 1937. The Boston Symphony was founded in 1881, the Cincinnati in 1895, the Pittsburgh in 1896, the Philadelphia in 1900. The remaining six have come into being at intervals since the beginning of the century, and one, the National Symphony Orchestra of Washington, D.C., is still conducted by the Dutchman, Hans Kindler, formerly first ’cello in the Philadelphia orchestra, who founded it in 1931. One of the conductors has taken a new post since the recordings were made-Artur Rodzinski, whose reputation as an orchestra-builder led Toscanini to choose him for the job of training the NBC Symphony Orchestra in 1937 and putting it into shape for Toscanini to take over.

Rodzinski has since become permane ent conductor of the New York Philharmonic in succession to Barbirolli, end has been succeeded in Cleveland by the Austrian Erich Leinsdorf, who is 31 years old, the youngest man conducting a major American Symphony. Leinsdorf began with an innovation-he announced all the music and soloists for the season before the tickets were offered for sale. One famous conductor who, like Leopold Stokowski, is conspicuous by his absence from this series, is Bruno. Walter, who is celebrating his 50th year as a conductor this season. He is conducting the Metropolitan Opera for the third successive year, and will be guest conductor to the New York Philharmonic and also the Philadelphia. Bruno Walter was only 17 when he was entrusted with his first directorial position at the Cologne Opera, in 1893, Seven years later, he was sharing the baton over the Berlin Royal Opera with Karl Muck and Richard Strauss. He was in Amsterdam when the Nazis occupied Austria, only a few weeks after he had been conducting in Vienna. He went ‘to France and became a citizen, and now has his first papers for United States citizenship. The first orchestra to be heard (on Sunday, January 2, 1944, at 2.30 p.m.), is the Pittsburgh Symphony, conducted by Fritz Reiner, which will play music by Moussorgsky, Debussy, and the young American, Morton Gould. Much of the music that will be heard in this series of concerts comes from the pens of the rising generation of American composers, and some is by the more firmly-established exponents of the art. Morton Gould, who has written "symphonic jazz," has two movements of his first symphony included, and Virgil ‘Thompson (an article by whom appears on the opposite page), has his Symphony No, 2 These names, with those of John Powell, Charles Griffes, George Chadwick, William Grant Still, and Howard Hanson, may be new to the 4YA audience, but Aaron Copland is known here for his score to the film Of Mice and Men, and his "El Salon Mexico," while Samuel Barber’s "Essay for Orchestra" has listeners.

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