Relief Men

In big league baseball, fans wait to see who is pitching before they lay their bets. With symphony orchestras, the man whom fans either cheer or boo is the conductor. Arturo Toscanini having finished 16 innings with the NBC Symphony Orchestra, a comparative rookie named Hans Wilhelm Steinberg stepped into the box last week, while veteran Bruno Walter sat by in the dugout, ready for action.

If Toscanini can be said to have any proteges, they are Erich Leinsdorf, newest of the Metropolitan Opera's conductors, and Hans Steinberg. An exile from Nazi Germany, Steinberg was conducting the Palestine Symphony when Toscanini visited there in 1936. So delighted was Toscanini with Steinberg's preliminary groundwork for his concerts that he chose him as his assistant in preparing for the NBC broadcasts.

Steinberg, an expert conductor in his own right, conducts without a score, like Toscanini. Unlike Toscanini, he waggles his head both for cues and for umph. And when pinches come, he winds up like Dizzy Dean and lets them have it. Steinberg's box score: one hit, one error (playing Anton Bruckner's interminable Fourth Symphony).

Bruno Walter, another exile from Germany, now an "honorary citizen" of France, arrived in Manhattan last week after a crossing that was bumpier than anything by Stravinsky. On his arrival he told reporters a story: Long before Herr Walter changed his residence for political reasons, he conducted a series of Munich concerts attended by a music-lover who last week changed his name for religious reasons, Eugenio Pacelli. While the series was in progress, Walter's friend, Russian Pianist Ossip Gabrilowitsch, was imprisoned on charges of espionage. Gabrilowitsch got a message to Walter, who spoke to Pacelli, who whispered in someone's ear. In not much more time than it takes to play a Bruckner symphony, Gabrilowitsch was free.

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