All That Is Good

A starlit Philippine sky covered the roofless ruins of old Santa Cruz church. Viennese-born Conductor Herbert Zipper stepped onto the plank podium--and the Manila Symphony Society's first concert since December 1941 had begun.

The audience of 1,200 soldiers and natives who gathered last week inside the crumbling walls settled back to listen to Beethoven's Third (Eroica) Symphony. Occasionally during the softer passages, a siren wailed or a bulldozer could be heard working away at Manila's rubble. Beads of perspiration tipped Dr. Zipper's sharp nose. In the first row sat Mrs. Douglas MacArthur, in a pink cotton frock.. Also present was the Symphony's president, Mrs. Benito Legarda, a handsome Philippine woman who hid the Society's instruments and scores from the Japs in 1941.

The orchestra was as colorful as the audience. Four American soldiers in khaki, an Australian lieutenant, a native boy and five young girls filled the chairs of some of the Society's 28 missing musicians who had been killed by the Japs or were still fighting as guerrillas in the mountains.

Supercritical listeners noted imperfections in the reading of the New World Symphony, Antonin Dvorak's tribute to America. Some of the hastily rehearsed musicians were playing unfamiliar instruments furnished by the U.S. Army Special Services Division. But the Manila Symphony gave the people a promise that night -- as well as a concert. As a Dutch officer, a former Amsterdam flutist, put it : "All that is beautiful and good will come back in our lives."

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