Music: Businessmen's Orchestra

• Share

For 20 years, a Chicago orchestra has held weekly rehearsals, given public concerts. Only its conductor (George Dasch, of Northwestern University) is a professional musician. Its founder was bass-playing George Lytton, president of the Hub stores. Now an orchestra of 115 Chicagoans, 25 of its players are presidents or vice presidents of businesses. A doctor plays the piccolo, a dentist the trombone, a poultry farmer the trumpet, a onetime steel puddler the oboe. A waiting list of 200 eyes the orchestra hungrily : from the list, new players are chosen when members die or cut too many rehearsals.

Last week the Chicago Business Men's Orchestra temporarily had a new conductor: old "Papa" Frederick Stock of the Chicago Symphony.

In four rehearsals, Papa Stock put the businessmen through many a bad moment. He told the basses: "You sound like a bunch of old ladies." He bawled out Dr.J. Peerman Nesselrod for offside piccolo peeps. Thanks to Dr. Stock's business like drilling, in the orchestra's 20th-birthday concert the businessmen tackled Dvorak's New World Symphony and a sheaf of shorter pieces (including a Symphonic Waltz by Papa Stock) with a precision which other amateur groups could well envy.