Gurrelieder

Two lady harpists in trailing black came on the stage first, tinkered with their strings, looked grave as they tested the pedals, plucked a tentative chord or two. Cellists and violinists came next, took chairs on either side of an imposing conductor's stand. Then a brawny man appeared bearing a score twice the size of most. An inner curtain rolled up, disclosing the rest of an enormous orchestra, behind it a bank of faces rising two-thirds of the way to the stage ceiling. Paunchy Tenor Paul Althouse entered with willowy, blonde Soprano Jeannette Vreeland and dark, smiling Contralto Rose Bampton. Finally came Philadelphia's Conductor Leopold Stokowski, wearing the full black cravat which, with his halo of light hair, makes him look like an erect, dandified David Belasco out of the age of inno- cence.* Philadelphia's Academy of Music stage was set in this fashion last week for the U. S. premiere of Gurrelieder, a choral-symphony by Austrian Arnold Schonberg, most extreme of all musical extremists. No fewer than 532 persons were required to give it: 400 choristers from the Princeton Glee Club, Philadelphia's Fortnightly Club and the Mendelssohn Club; an orchestra of 125 pieces, six soloists and Conductor Stokowski, for whom there appears to be no musical enterprise too colossal./- Philadelphians approached it doubtfully. They were wary of Stokowski's modernistic mood. Schbnberg's awful, shrieking Die Glueckliche Hand was still in their minds (TIME, April 28, 1930). But Gurrelieder proved to be neither ear-splitting nor bewildering. It began like Wagner in his tenderest mood, Wagner as tie described the forest murmurs in Siegfried, the love of Tristan and Isolde, of Siegfried and Briinnhilde.

Tenor Althouse sang first. He wore a conventional cutaway but was supposed to be Waldemar, King of the Danes in the 14th Century, hero of a cycle of poems by Danish Jens Peter Jacobsen. Waldemar loved Tove (Soprano Vreeland) with a deathless love, kept her in a castle at Gurre near Elsinore where royal Hamlet lived. Softly, exquisitely the strings described their passion for one another. Then Helvig, Waldemar's shrewish wife, lad Tove killed. A wood dove (Contralto Bampton) told the tragedy, how Tove's heart was still and the King's own heart strong still, dead and yet strong. . . . It was intermission. In the bleachers the choristers, who had not sung at all, stood up, stretched their legs as if the sixth inning of a baseball game had just ended. But there was no rest for Stokowski. He hurried backstage, described Gnrrelieder for people listening to it over the radio in Europe and the U. S.

There was no rest for Waldemar either. Because in his anguish he imprecated God. he was condemned after death to ride through the skies nightly accompanied by his dead vassals. A peasant gibbered with fear the night he heard the coffin rattling overhead and the church door banging. The male choristers were the wild-riding skeletons, longing for release.

Release came in a conclusion easier to reconcile with the radical middle-aged Schonberg. He wrote his last solo for a speaker, gave him specific notes to hit as he recited about the peaceful things in nature. Philadelphians instantly recognized this so-called sprechstimme as the device which Composer Alban Berg, a Schooenberg pupil, used with the same wailing effect in Wozzeck (TIME, March 16, 1931). Piccolos had a prominent part in this last orchestration, done ten years after the first. The strings had difficult chromatics to flurry through. But it never got noisy or jarring, never lost sight of Tove's tender love theme. Over the radio Stokowski said that Gurreliede was unlike most modern music in that it was simple, direct, easy to grasp on a single hearing. If in Vienna Composer Schonberg was listening he perhaps resented such homely praise. He started Gnrrelieder when he was 26 (he is 57 now), when he was deeply impressed with Wagner's harmonic combinations, Wagner's use of Leitmotifs. Inspired by Wag ner, he wrote music of stirring beauty. But most of his later, more original works have struck laymen as hideous and obscure. They have had a certain technical interest in that they have grown out of extensive experiments with chromatics and the twelve-tone scale. They illustrate new elaborately propounded principles which many a young ultra modern is endeavoring to cultivate. But such cerebral mat ters have little interest for the rank & file of orchestra subscribers. Philadelphians were plainly grateful last week for new music they could understand. With the 532 performers they applauded vigorously the man who had insisted on giving it. then conducted it superbly. Stokowski will repeat the performance April 20 in Manhattan.

Sweet Pomona

For three days and two nights last week 30 Pomona College boys traveled in day coaches from Claremont, Calif, to St. Louis. Their railroad fares had been contributed by the Pomona student body (enrollment: 781) and by boys from the University of Redlands whom the Pomona boys had beaten in a local glee club contest. Grimy and tired the 30 travelers arrived in St. Louis just in time to get into their evening clothes, enter the National Intercollegiate Glee Club finals. They beat Yale, Pennsylvania State, Monmouth, University of Oklahoma, Denison and Rochester, the winners in other sectional contests. Yale gleemen, who flew expensively from New Haven, sang second best, Penn State third. Not for sweet singing alone is Pomona famed. Knowing tourists come from all over California to see its huge ogival fresco of Prometheus by the one armed Mexican Muralist Jaan Clemente Orozco.

Cincinnati's Bye

Lions and tigers in Cincinnati's Zoological Gardens will not be disturbed this summer by the strains of grand opera. Mrs. Mary Emery and Mrs. Annie Sinton Taft, the two ladies who for years supported the Zoo Opera, are dead. A new endowment campaign was needed last year (TIME, June 29, 1931). Last year's deficit explained last week's decision. It amounted to $114,000.

Belkin's Home Town

When Roxy's Gang went touring last spring (TIME, Feb. 9, 1931), one of its stands was Omaha. One of its leading entertainers was Soprano Beatrice Belkin, a pretty, sprightly little girl from Lawrence, Kans. Little Joseph Littau, the bright, bushy-haired conductor of the Omaha Symphony, went eagerly to meet Beatrice Belkin, seized her in a wholehearted embrace. Natives of Omaha who witnessed their salute were taken slightly aback but they knew that Conductor Littau had also been a protege of Roxy (S. J. Rothafel), assumed that perhaps theatrefolk in the East acted that way.

Last autumn Conductor Littau cleared himself by announcing that he and Beatrice Belkin had been married. Last week Beatrice Belkin refused several engagements in the East and, instead, soloed with what she now calls her hometown orchestra. This gracious attitude merited, and got, a gracious reception. Beatrice Belkin never roused the welkin; her voice is shrill, rather thin. But the Omaha audience packed into Joslyn Art Memorial Auditorium called her back time & again. Omaha's critics fell in line with the public. The city has had to struggle to maintain its orchestra. The Press never voices any criticism which might discourage subscribers or little Joseph Littau.

Dobrowen for Manhattan

When Issai Dobrowen (pronounced Do-bro-vane) sat worshipfully listening to one of the Parsifal performances Arturo Toscanini conducted in Bayreuth last summer, he had no notion that he would ever be invited to conduct Toscanini's New York orchestra. In his 38 years the crinkly-haired, wiry little Russian has gone far. He has conducted in Moscow. Dresden, Berlin, Sofia, Oslo. Last year he was chosen along with British Basil Cameron to succeed hulking Alfred Hertz in San Francisco. Last week it was announced that he would conduct the Philharmonic-Symphony for four weeks next winter, after Toscanini finishes the season's first eight weeks, before German Bruno Walter arrives.

In San Francisco last year Conductor Dobrowen gave tense, dynamic performances which made him more popular than quiet Basil Cameron. This year many of his concerts have been ragged because of hurried rehearsals. But San Francisco's music-wise feel that he will do well with his brief Manhattan engagement. New audiences inspire him. He will have an orchestra all trained for him, able to respond instantly to his quick, intuitive command. Conductor Dobrowen hates plodding but his intuitions are usually correct. He is a good fisherman, knows when to strike. Other musicians may have landed bigger muskellunge than he, but few men land the Philharmonic-Symphony.

Opera House Permit

The much discussed, often denied project for having opera in Rockefeller Centre (TIME, Feb. 1, et ante) progressed last week in Manhattan to this extent: the city was asked for a building permit, the building to house an unnamed opera company. The blueprints call for a structure which would seem to suit the new idea of a popularized Metropolitan. There will be fewer boxes, more orchestra seats, more cheap seats, more standing room. There will be elaborate broadcasting equipment, 52 seat phones for the deaf.

*Like tango-dancers, Stokowski and other well-tailored conductors strive to present a flawless back to their public. Their dress-clothes are carefully rigged underneath with buttons and tapes so that they can raise their arms without hiking their coats out of shape, sending their coattails flying. /-Depression does not faze the untiring Stokowski. Last week, after a four-hour rehearsal of expensive Gurrelieder, he said: "I will lead street bands, I will give free concerts, when this Depression prevents folks from hearing music they must have."

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