Requiem in Fort Wayne

Verdi's Requiem Mass is seldom heard: its surcharged score demands too much verve and skill for all but the best orchestras and the most courageous conductors. But last week, in Fort Wayne, Ind., an amateur orchestra and chorus carried it off in fine style.

The man who lifted Fort Wayne to the occasion was 39-year-old Hans Schwieger (rhymes with eager), a broad and tall German refugee. His 89-piece orchestra of teachers, factory workers, salesmen, engineers, bank clerks and housewives had been eked out with 16 recruits from Chicago's Symphony Orchestra and rehearsed to professional pitch.

In beginning life again in Fort Wayne, Schwieger won the hearts of his earnest, amateur musicians, but he never spared them. Said he: "I keep them on tension. You have to use some psychology. They like me but do you think you get everything in this world by friendliness? No. I say to them: 'I don't care if you love me. Hate me. But play.' "

Schwieger marked every page of everyone's music, noted the fingering and position for the stringed instruments, marked the upbows and downbows, indicated whether he wanted a phrase played at the tip of the bow or at the lower part. He marked every crescendo and diminuendo for the brasses. Then he sent his musicians home to practice their individual parts. Later each section of the orchestra rehearsed together, while Schwieger went from one room to another, coaching first the violins, then the woodwinds. Pay didn't start until the orchestra came together for full rehearsal.

To sing the leading parts with the 200-man chorus, he invited Metropolitan Opera Singers Rose Bampton, Bruna Castagna, Frederick Jagel, Alexander Kipnis. Said Kipnis afterwards: "That orchestra is good enough to play any place."

Schwieger was once conductor at the Staatsoper in Berlin. Fort Wayne had him now because he had married a Jewess. When the Nazis took over, his wife divorced him for his sake, but without his knowledge. He came to the U.S. via Japan, then sent for his wife and remarried her. After Pearl Harbor the FBI seized Schwieger as an enemy alien; he was held for 401 days until friends got him out. The day he came home from jail, his wife dropped dead.

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