Music: Up Strike Orchestras

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(See front cover)

From one end of the land to the other, symphony orchestras last week, tuned themselves for the opening of a new season. Manhattan, Philadelphia and Seattle actually began their concerts. Important bands in other cities busied themselves with rehearsals or announcing schedules.

In Boston. Most ambitious of the season's programs is that mapped out by the Boston Symphony. The occasion warrants it. Fifty years have passed since the late Major Henry Lee Higginson undertook to provide Bostonians with a permanent orchestra, brought over German George Henschel to take first command. Despite his 80 years, Henschel came back last week to inaugurate the jubilee season with a repetition of his original program. Conductor Sergei Alexandrovitch Koussevitzky anticipated the opening with a superb radio concert, planned his actual return for the season's second week. Scheduled for the winter are the premieres of many contemporary works, a Beethoven Festival to be given in Washington through the first week in December, a Bach Festival in Boston in March.

To Sergei Koussevitzky is due 100% credit for the Boston Symphony's present excellence. Seven years ago it was in sorry state. Frenchmen Henri Rabaud and Pierre Monteux, successors to the maligned Karl Muck,— had proved incapable. The directors were appraising all the availables in Europe when they came upon a Russian exiled in Paris. They traced his history: at 12 he had been chef d'orchestre in the theatre of his native town (Tver in North Russia), composed whatever music was required for the plays and conducted the entr'actes. At 14 he went to Moscow to study, chose for his instrument the bull fiddle, toured Europe for ten years as a contrabass virtuoso. By 1919 he had achieved his ambition, become a conductor again. Koussevitzky concerts were soon famous in Moscow and Petrograd but that was not enough for its leader. He wanted to reach the great masses of Russians who had never heard a symphony concert. So for several summers he chartered a steamer, cruised the 2,300 mi. down the River Volga playing to the peasants who gathered on its banks. The Revolution made Russia impossible for most musicians. Koussevitzky left along with the rest, settled in Paris where in partnership with his wife he still conducts the profitable music-publishing house called Edition Russe.

The choice of Koussevitzky for Boston has proved singularly happy. He is an excellent musician, although it is said he cannot read a score, has to hire pianists to teach him new music before he in turn can transmit it to his men. He has the magnetism, the energy which were necessary to rejuvenate Boston's orchestra in 1924. He has an insatiable interest in new music and a talent for playing it. His programs are indisputably the best in the country. So is his understanding of Ravel and Debussy.