Music: Night Music

(2 of 2)

Most remarkable Baltimore ensemble is the one in which Pundit Henry Louis Mencken plays the piano. Called the "Saturday Night Club," it is 34 years old and, according to Pianist Mencken, welcomes "anybody who can play any instrument, who seems to be a decent sort of fellow and who is fit to drink with." It meets in a building in St. Paul Street owned by the widow of Violin-Maker Albert Hildebrandt, with whom Mencken and the late Reporter Emmanuel Daniels of the Baltimore News used to play trios. Its members, of whom ten usually show up for the music and then go to drink beer at Schellhase's German restaurant, include Publisher Albert Knopf, Dr. Pearl, Surgeon Franklin Hazlehurst, Radiologist Christian Deetjent and Professor Max Brodel of Johns Hopkins, sometime American Mercury Writer Heinrich Ewald Buchholz, with onetime Conductor Gustave Strübe of the municipal Baltimore Symphony as leader. Flautist Johnson, who does not play with the Saturday Nighters, calls Pianist Mencken the "Irremovable Rector'' of the group. Forthright and fluent at the piano, Mencken has also conducted in his time. Four years ago, when beer became legal, he was interviewed on the subject on the radio, asked and obtained leave to lead an NBC orchestra creditably through Strauss's Radetzky March and Hi-Lee, Hi-Lo.