Stokowski & Shostakovich

Eugene Ormandy is regular conductor of the Philadelphia Orchestra and last month signed a new five-year contract with it. But Leopold Stokowski is still its occasional conductor. Last week he was in Philadelphia for one of his brief stints on the podium. As always, he made news.

Feature of Stokowski's return was the first performance outside Russia of the sixth and latest symphony of Dmitri Shostakovich, at 34 the No. 1 Soviet composer. The Philadelphia Orchestra got first crack at No. 6 as it might have arranged for a ton of caviar: by negotiating with Amtorg Trading Corp., paying a fee so stiff (amount kept secret) that it had to be specially approved by the Philadelphia Orchestra directors.

Composer Shostakovich has been on & off the careening bandwagon of the Soviet music party line. When he was off, his work was denounced as "un-Soviet, unwholesome, cheap, eccentric, tuneless and Leftist" by Pravda, which probably spoke for Musicritic Stalin. Shostakovich's fifth symphony, a thoughtful and tuneful glorification of the October Revolution, got him back on the bandwagon. Since then (1937) he has worked in the Leningrad Conservatory. The symphony which Philadelphia heard last week sounded as if Shostakovich's seat were secure--even though the symphony lacked a choral apotheosis of Lenin which the composer had originally planned. Unorthodox in symphonic form, its three movements were: slow, fast, faster. The last movement reminded one Philadelphia critic (Edwin H. Schloss of the Record) of "Comrade John Philip Sousa, in blouse and boots."

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