Like the Movies

In Chicago last month Polish Andre Skalski organized a series of concerts with this double-headed aim: to make orchestral music as available (eventually as popular) as cinema performances; to give employment to musicians. Mr. Skalski, 35, is energetic, hopeful. Three years ago he went to Chicago as a piano teacher, last year had an orchestra with which he gave six concerts. This year's program is based on the idea that crowds will flock to music if they can suit their own convenience as to time, as they do in going to the cinema. For 15 weeks three continuous programs will be played by Skalski daily. A typical program: classical music at 6:30 p.m., popular music at 8 p.m., semi-popular music at 9:30 p.m. The number of musicians alternates between 45 one week and 25 the next. Mr. Skalski thinks he is on a paying basis.

Choral Cossacks

Ten years ago the defeat in the Crimea of General Peter Nicholaievich Wrangel left Russia's White Army stranded in a Bolshevik prison camp near Constantinople. Provisions were scarce. The troops had nothing left but the frayed uniforms on their backs. Bandsmen had lost their instruments. To raise the morale, each regiment formed a chorus.

Cossacks from the River Don region had for their leader an ebullient little machine-gun lieutenant named Serge

Jaroff. Little Jaroff had once been a pupil of Composer Serge Rachmaninoff. He could write down music from memory when, as in most cases, there was no music to be had. By the time the Don Cossacks were transported to Bulgaria their chorus was so good that it was engaged to sing in a Greek Orthodox Church in Sofia. In 1923 it gave its first formal concert in Vienna, has since sung some 1.800 times throughout Europe, the British Isles, Australia.

Last week the Don Cossacks arrived for a first U. S. tour. They entered the country on "Nansen passes" (devised by the late Norwegian Explorer-Statesman Fridtjof Nansen to aid Russian emigres after the Revolution, issued by the League of Nations). Stories preceded them: about a concert they gave in Yassi, frontier town of Rumania, where so many Bessarabians mobbed the theatre that firemen were called to play the hose on them; in Riga, where 20,000 people met Jaroff at the station, carried him and his automobile to the hotel; in Berlin, where a German general gave him the Iron Cross he had won fighting against the Russians; in Paris, where Conductor Jaroff kicked sharply at an old lady who edged close and nudged him while he was conducting. (She proved to be his favorite grandmother whom he had not seen for ten years. Grandson Jaroff explained: "No one exists when I am conducting.")

Manhattan's Russian population turned out in full force for the Cossacks' opening concert last week. First the singers filed on stage, impressive in uniforms copied from the ones they wore in the army of Tsar Nicholas: black, belted tunics, dark blue breeches with a single scarlet stripe, high black boots. Then fast as a flying beetle came Jaroff. He flashed one shining smile which seemed to include everyone from parquet to gallery, then turned, crouched, lifted his little elbows and brought forth an amazing burst of sound.

In this same emotionalized vein the concert proceeded through Russian church music and folk songs. The Cossacks sing either very loudly, with stunning effect, or softly with effect just as stunning. The voices have the mellifluous, full-throated quality peculiar to Russians and so well suited to music in the minor mood. There are basses which seem to come from the bowels of the earth. (Cossack Tierekov, said to have the lowest voice on record, recently had his throat photographed in Berlin.) There are falsettos which soar high into the soprano realm. (Audiences often suspect Cossack Ovtchinikov of being a woman.) The Cossacks hum their own accompaniments and strum them. Conductor Jaroff's control of his men is intense, superb, exercised by a clutched hand and fierce jerks of his little head. Musical cranks at last week's debut performance complained that the substance of the songs was sacrificed to the manner of singing, that too many tricks made for monotony. But no such attitude was reflected in the box office returns. The Cos sacks gave performances in Greenwich (Conn.), Philadelphia, Montclair (N. J.), & Richmond, three more Manhattan ones, then started their tour.* Individual artists rarely perform more than three times a week. The Don Cossacks will sing practically every night until they sail back to Europe in mid-December.

*Cities to hear the Don Cossack Chorus: Troy, Boston, Montreal, Toronto, Detroit, Ann Arbor, St. Louis, Chicago, Minneapolis, Madison (Wis.), Pittsburgh, Akron, Indianapolis, Dayton, Cincinnati, Grand Rapids, Lansing, Hartford (Conn.), St. George (Staten Island). Baltimore, Washington.

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