Weinberger Week

Among the world's leading composers who have fled to the U.S., one at least, Jaromir Weinberger, bouncing little Czech, has gone wholeheartedly native. A great one for polkas and fugues, Weinberger's works since coming to the U.S. include The Legend of Sleepy Hollow and Prelude and Fugue on Dixie. Last week his two newest were performed: The Lincoln Symphony and the score for a ballet, Saratoga.

Lincoln has inspired symphonies by Daniel Gregory Mason, Russell Bennett, Silas Pratt; a Requiem (on the Gettysburg Address) by Rubin Goldmark; an Abraham Lincoln Song (to Walt Whitman's O Captain! My Captain!) by Walter Damrosch. None ever caught on. And last week Cincinnati critics had their doubts after listening to Weinberger's symphony, given by Eugene Goossens and the Cincinnati Symphony. Weinberger plunged heavily into Deep River, splashing the spiritual not only in his "heroic scherzo" but also in a final rondo. The other movements were subtitled "6 Captain! My Captain!" and "The Hand on the Plough." Innocently Czech Weinberger worked in his King Charles's head--a fugue. But no polka.

Saratoga, danced in Manhattan by Leonide Massine's Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo, was Muscovite Americana, less pretentious than the Russians' earlier Union Pacific and Ghost Town. Jockeys and girls in hoop skirts footed it among the Victorian curlicues of New York's spa, while two males vied for the favors of svelte Alexandra Danilova. Weinberger's tripping score afforded not only one authentic polka, but many a polka-dotted measure. No fugue.

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