Orchestras

For some months now Carnegie Hall has stood on its Manhattan corner red and warm and shabby, a little ashamed, it seemed, to be caught staying in town during the summer. Last week it raised its head to oldtime haughtiness, threw open its doors, spilled its lights onto Fifty-seventh street, stood proud again, important, among the young upstarts that tower head and shoulders above it. It was the occasion of the first Philharmonic concert, the 2086th in the history of the Philharmonic Society, the 85th season.

There was a welcome for Conductor Josef Willem Mengelberg, red-faced, genial, like a country doctor, and the concert .was on. There was the gay, graceful symphony of Johann Christian Bach, eleventh son of the mighty Johann Sebastian Bach; there was Beethoven's Eighth, droll, delightful, made side-splitting here and there by the heavy hand of Mynherr Mengelberg, there were excerpts from Berlioz's Damnation of Faust, "Minuet of Will-o'-the-Wisps," "Dance of the Sylphs" and the "Rakoczy March," and sandwiched in between, featured, a U. S. work, given its first Manhattan performance in manuscript. Pan and the Priest it was called--Pan, the Pagan spirit of unfettered emotions, crossing swords in an endless battle with the Priest, meditative ascetic. Critics found it "striding with energy and lifted head, large- molded, full-throated," "excellent music for a feature film, to depict the struggle of the upper and lower natures of man. . . . concentrated noise," "displaying nothing of striking originality in either melody or harmony. . . ." The sleek, confident folk in the orchestra and the boxes, their less fortunate fellows four flights up, received it warmly, clapped and clapped until Composer Howard Hanson,* tall, lean, with Ichabod legs, came out and folded himself into thank-you bows.

In Detroit's Orchestra Hall, the Detroit Symphony Orchestra gave the first concert of its 13th season before a friendly, congenial audience that radiated enthusiasm over the orchestra, the program and Conductor Ossip Gabrilowitsch. Beethoven and Brahms wrote the important music for the evening--the Lenore Overture No. 3, and Brahms' First Symphony in C Minor with its tender upward sweep of strings, the sombre throbbing of basses and tympanums, bravely building, mellow, wise. Debussy and Liszt furnished the spice-- Nuages and Fetes, vague, lovely, and the Second Hungarian Rhapsody, vigorous, breathless. Conductor Gabrilowitsch did his work well, won for himself an ovation, a wreath.

Chicagoans with lean purses, Chicagoans with fat purses, some with no purses at all, just their tickets and a coin or two to jingle, all gathered together one afternoon last week for the opening concert of the Chicago Symphony. A few came early and a few came late but the great body of them, in the Chicago manner, arrived just on the minute, blocked the great doors of Orchestra Hall. All but a few most improper people were in time to see a trim little man scoot out alone, take a score of hurried, jerky bows and turn his back on them. Weber's Euryanthe overture was soon commemorating the 100th anniversary of the composer's death. Conductor Frederick Stock had chosen it, played it easily, precisely, as he had played it many times before.

Cesar Franck's symphony came next, mystic, scarlet-tinged. Then came Stravinsky's L'Oiseau de Feu sweeping its fantastic plumage through a maze of golden apples and silver trees, stripped a little of its diabolism, but gloriously exotic withal. There was the scherzo from Mendelssohn's A Midsummer Night's Dream with its solo for Flutist Yeschke, new this season, and the dances from Borodin's Prince Igor, strident, barbarous, voluptuous.

The orchestra? In mid-season form, well-disciplined, beautiful strings, hesitant brasses. Conductor Stock? An excellent leader, sure, scholarly, sane. Too sane, some said, called him dry, bloodless.

*Composer Howard Hanson, 29 years old, is director of the Eastman School of Music at Rochester, N. Y.