Music: Batons Up!

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Cleveland dressed up to match new Severance Hall, built for the Orchestra and dedicated last winter (TIME, Feb. 16). Conductor Nikolai Sokolov indulged none of his predilections for new, unproven music. For him the occasion deserved Strauss, Franck, Beethoven, Brahms.

Other major orchestras are scheduled to give their first programs this week: The Chicago Symphony with Conductor Frederick Stock beginning his 27th season; the Cincinnati Symphony with Eugene Goossens beginning his first; the Seattle Symphony with Karl Krueger. Next week will begin the Los Angeles Philharmonic with Artur Rodzinski, the Minneapolis Symphony with Henri Verbrugghen, the St. Louis Symphony with Vladimir Golschmann, the Milwaukee Philharmonic with Frank Laird Waller. Rochester, N. Y. with different guest conductors, Portland, Ore. (Willem van Hoogstraten), Omaha (Joseph Littau) and Syracuse (Vladimir Shavitch) save their openings for November.

News Out of Worcester

Two episodes last week gave the annual music festival of Worcester, Mass, wider publicity than the pedantic excellence of the affair has normally enjoyed during its 72 years. One episode might have been anticipated, for when the name of Percy Aldridge ("Country Gardens") Grainger appears on a program it is more than likely to forecast a performance out of the commonplace. The second episode concerned German Soprano Editha Fleischer, especially imported to be leading soloist in the Festival's lastnight program.

Soprano Fleischer had had a disagreement with Festival Conductor Albert Stoessel at a morning rehearsal. She had objected to the local accompanist provided for her, asked to have summoned from Manhattan little Kurt Ruhrseitz, her coach at the Metropolitan Opera House. Pianist Ruhrseitz arrived but by performance time Soprano Fleischer was missing. Festival directors searched widely for her, finally attributed her disappearance to temperament, proceeded with the concert without her. The directors should have known better. If Soprano Fleischer has flights of "temperament" she never shows them. After the concert she was discovered ia her hotel room (she had engaged two rooms, the directors had searched only one), lying on the floor deep in sleep. She said she must have taken two sleeping tablets instead of the prescribed one, in order to have a short nap before the concert. Oversleeping cost her her fee of $1,200.