Music: The Concert Trust

For years, two agencies have divided a glutton's share of the nation's concert business between them. They are: Columbia Artists Management, Inc., among whose contract stars are Soprano Lily Pons, Pianist Rudolf Serkin, Violinist Jascha Heifetz; and National Concerts and Artists Corp., which books Violinist Nathan Milstein, Pianist Alexander Brailowsky, Baritone Robert Merrill, et al. The agencies' power lies in their subsidiaries—Columbia's Community Concerts, and National's Civic Concert Service—which between them have organized local civic associations in some 1,200 communities in 48 states. These groups act as local sponsors for the big...