Music: Humor

People who lack music often complain that music lacks humor. Such people never grasp witty music, the intentioned epigrams of Ravel and Scriabine, of that deft and revered knight, Sir Arthur Sullivan. They can understand performers who make fun of serious music, burlesquing well-known classics, but how performers can, without irreverence, have fun with music these complainers cannot see. Few such gentry were in the Cleveland audience which last week heard a drunken Russian cab driver conduct the Volga boat-song. Nicolai Sokolov, Cleveland Orchestra conductor, famed interpreter of the Russians, had...