Music: Radio Maestro

Why do symphony conductors cost so much? If it comes to that, why is a conductor? These questions may well have been pondered by R. C. A. stockholders last January when their pudgy President David Sarnoff sent envoys to Milan to induce Maestro Arturo Toscanini to conduct ten broadcasts with the projected NBC Symphony Orchestra (TIME, Feb. 15). Conductor Toscanini asked and got a contract for $4,000 per broadcast, probably the highest price ever paid a conductor. At the behest of plump, practical Signora Toscanini, it was also stipulated that NBC should buy the Maestro a round-trip ticket from Italy to the U. S. and pay the income taxes on his U. S. earnings (TIME, Oct. 18).

To the U. S. man in the street, a symphony conductor is somebody who flops his arms in a sweating frenzy while others do the job. His are the most spectacular tantrums the music world allows, the greatest adulation and the creamiest financial reward it bestows. Yet he scrapes not, neither does he toot, thump nor sing. How does anybody know whether he can even read music? Yet at the end of the concert it is he who takes the bows, not the laboring instrumentalists over whom he presides. Is his a job, or a racket?

That his job is not lightly to be dispensed with was shown nine years ago. Following a precedent set by tradition-busting Muscovites,* Manhattan musicians formed a "Conductorless Orchestra" and gave a series of Carnegie Hall concerts. They managed to keep time with each other, played as well as some orchestras do under some conductors. But the electric fusion of tone that would have been brought forth by a Toscanini, a Stokowski or a Furtwangler was completely lacking. Financially the venture was a dismal flop.