Spring Festivals

If music addicts had seven-league boots they might spend their winters striding between Boston, Philadelphia, Manhattan and Chicago. In summer they would go to Europe; in autumn perhaps to the San Francisco Opera. But spring would find them visiting a dozen smaller U. S. communities which year after year hold worthy local festivals. Already this spring Harrisburg, Pa., has had its annual Mozart concerts. Charlottesville was host to the Virginia State Choral Society. St. Louis concentrated on folk songs and sea chanteys. Rochester gave a hearing to contemporary native composers. Rich programs have been given at Cornell College in Mount Vernon, Iowa, and at Cornell University in Ithaca, N. Y. Last week the spring's proudest festivals were given in Bethlehem, Pa., and in Ann Arbor, Mich.-- In Bethlehem the Moravian Trombone Choir climbed again to the belfry of Lehigh University's Packer Memorial Church, announced the beginning of two days of Bach. Philadelphia's Bruce Carey conducted, as he did last year after Death took kindly Fred Wolle. the Bethlehem native who in 1898 founded the Bach Festivals, made them bravely survive the invasion of steel. Conductor Carey used "Mr. Fred's" chorus composed of Lehigh Valley amateurs. Like "Mr. Fred," he had players from the Philadelphia Orchestra and four capable soloists (Soprano Ethyl Hayden, Contralto Rose Bampton, Tenor Dan Gridley, Basso Julius Huehn). But with all his display of energy Conductor Carey's interpretations were superficial. And the performances, often muddled and sluggish, gave Bethlehemites good cause for concern over their Bach supremacy. The conductor who presided over the May Festival at Ann Arbor last week was there for his 30th session. He looked old and stooped but his performances never lagged. When he came to the U. S., a violinist from the Cologne Orchestra in Germany, his first boss had been Chicago's Theodore Thomas, pioneer among U. S. orchestra-builders. After morning rehearsals, Conductor Thomas and young Frederick Stock went often to Zum Rothen Stern (now the Red Star Inn) on Chicago's North Clark Street. There, over many a bottle of wine, Conductor Thomas told his protege how he had left New York for the Midwest, how he had found new audiences fresh and stimulating. In 1905 Frederick Stock succeeded Thomas as conductor of the Chicago Symphony. But before the old man's death he had taken the orchestra out on the road, satisfied himself that Thomas was right. Conductor Stock, now 61, suffers from sciatica and arthritis. But when the other big league conductors--Koussevitzky of Boston, Toscanini of New York, Stokowski of Philadelphia--hurry off for vacations after the formal winter season, Stock stays on duty to take his band to Cornell in Iowa, to the Festival at Ann Arbor. Usually thereafter he sails for Germany to bathe at the spas, hunt up new scores. But this year, for the sake of Chicago's musical reputation, he will conduct through half of July in the outdoor arena built by Swift & Co. for the second World's Fair. Between engagements Stock usually goes to his house in northern Wisconsin where he walks a bit, mulls over early French literature, tinkers at cabinetmaking, writes music technically sound but emotionally unexciting. Conductor Stock prides himself on his restraint. His men have never seen him lose his temper or break a baton. He scorns self-advertising. His personal modesty made him resign his conductorship in 1918 because he felt that an important U. S. orchestra might prefer not to have a German bandmaster's son, not yet naturalized, for a conductor. In less than six months popular demand had him back at his post. During Depression the Chicago Symphony suffered like every other U. S. orchestra. But Chicago has not tired of Conductor Stock who after 29 years gives programs so eclectic and well-rounded that they are almost a match for Conductor Koussevitzky's in Boston. Last winter when audiences dwindled Chicago looked not to its conductor, but to its executive committee on which were such oldsters as Joseph Adams, 83, William Owen Goodman, 86, John Jacob Glessner, 91, all in their prime when the Orchestra Association was founded. At the annual meeting fortnight ago the three were made honorary trustees and competent money-raisers like Charles B. ("Barney") Goodspeed, Arthur Cable and Edward L. Ryerson be came their successors.

*Scheduled for this week is the Westchester Festival in White Plains, N. Y. Detroit is having special spring music. June brings the American Folksong Festival in which Kentucky mountaineers participate on the Mayo Trail, near Ashland. The North Shore Festivals (Evanston, Ill ) have been abandoned for lack of funds. The Worcester (Mass.) Festivals, oldest in the U. S., are given in the autumn.

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