NBC's Stroke

The 46th season of the Chicago Symphony came to an end last week with Associate Conductor Hans Lange on the podium. Regular Conductor Frederick Stock is so old and ailing these days that Chicago rarely sees him. The rumor that he will resign is not confirmed. But Chicagoans had another resignation to mull over, and they paid their respects to Concertmaster Mischa Mischakoff by standing and cheering him a full five minutes. As concertmaster with the new NBC Orchestra under Toscanini and Rodzinski, Mischakoff will have an enviable post. Chicago will have lost its best violinist.

Mischa Mischakoff, 42, seems cut out for a concertmaster. He was such a fine violinist at the Imperial Conservatory in St. Petersburg that, after the Revolution, he won a professorship to the Government Conservatory. He was only 24 when the Moscow 'Grand Opera asked him to be its first violin. Two years later he lit out of Russia, went to Manhattan, placed first in a contest of 500 violinists and got a chance to solo with the Philharmonic. Walter Damrosch made Mischakoff concertmaster of the New York Symphony, now defunct. Stokowski took him to Philadelphia, whence Frederick Stock got him for Chicago in 1930.

Music is real, music is earnest to Mischa Mischakoff. He teaches 22 pupils at the American Conservatory of Music, runs his own string quartet. He plays the piano almost as well as the violin. Students dread Mischakoff's caustic tongue but know that, at parties, he is a good fellow. A bachelor, he likes swimming, plays ping-pong gladly and badly, appears with hair mussed and bushy, clothes drooping as though too big for him. As a violin trader he is ready, shrewd, almost always wins. He regrets leaving Chicago but says he could not resist NBC's "fabulous contract."

The concertmaster is to an orchestra what the stroke oar is to a crew. He sits closest to the conductor (coxswain), takes his orders direct, sets an example to the other players. NBC sent for Mischakoff because, when Arturo Toscanini arrives to conduct Radio's proudest symphonic programs, the NBC Orchestra must have a stroke of the calibre to which the old maestro is accustomed.

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