Music: Cleveland's Future

Like the late Theodore Thomas of Chicago and the late Leopold Damrosch of New York, Conductor Nikolai Sokoloff has been an orchestra-builder. It was he who, shrewd, tireless and ambitious, founded the Cleveland Orchestra 14 years ago with the help of Adella Prentiss Hughes, and who secured for it last year its fine new home, Severance Hall (TIME, Feb. 16, 1931). Last week Nikolai Sokoloff, summering in Westport, Conn., was looking forward to next winter's 15th orchestra season; but he could not look forward to being Cleveland's maestro after May 31, 1933. The Cleveland Orchestra Company had failed to renew its contract with Founder Sokoloff, previously engaged for five-year periods.

Cleveland gossips dwelt on the unlikely theme that Conductor Sokoloff had been found wanting in social and civic ways. More important and evident, both to Conductor Sokoloff and the symphony's backers, were the facts the orchestra needed money and that more people in Cleveland would pay to see a newsworthy conductor than would pay to hear the best music consistently produced by the same conductor. Audiences have been bigger when guest conductors came to Cleveland, like Sir Hamilton Harty (who will guest conduct during Conductor Sokoloff's customary mid-season absence this year), Enrique Fernandez Arbos of Madrid, Bernardino Molinari of Rome, and Composers Igor Stravinsky, Ottorino Respighi, Maurice Ravel, Ernest Bloch. Pointing out that "under the devoted and skillful guidance of its conductor, it has become a seasoned and matured organization of the highest artistic excellence," a resolution prepared by Newton Diehl Baker provided that the Orchestra Company should be "free to investigate and experiment," to insure the Orchestra's "highest and largest future developments,"—i. e., which will make biggest box office noise. Founder Sokoloff may be retained on some new basis.