Mozart in the Desert

The 73 rugged men of the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra had just played seven concerts in eight days, but when Conductor Leonard Bernstein called for volunteers, 35 stepped forward. Crowded into two dusty buses, they crossed the Negeb desert to give the battle-scarred Old Testament town of Beersheba the first symphony concert of its history.*

Gershwin at Half-Stance. The orchestra members took the jolts and hard wooden seats good-naturedly, joked as they steered clear of roadside minefields, gazed across 2 1/2 miles of sand at Egypt's main base, Gaza.

In a vacant lot in Beersheba, the musicians played a program of Mozart, Beethoven and Gershwin to 1,000 soldiers who overflowed the benches, squatted in the sand, or sat on the flat roofs of surrounding Arab houses. Conducting while played the piano sitting on a chair balanced on piles of flat rocks, Bernstein felt the chair slipping away from him, rose to a half-stance, and continued to play the Rhapsody in Blue while the first violinist propped the chair up again.

Impertinent Obbligato. Since the Israel Philharmonic played Hatikvah (the Jewish national anthem) at the inaugural of the State of Israel in May, the orchestra has given 70 concerts, 23 of them on the road. Actually the orchestra is older than the state; it was known as the Palestine Symphony Orchestra when Arturo Toscanini led its first performance twelve years ago. Tel Aviv's Ohel Shem hall, where the orchestra usually plays, holds only 1,100. There the orchestra repeats each concert nine times to accommodate the crowds. It has played on, undismayed by blackouts, air raids, or the impertinent obbligato of small arms fire. In July another American guest conductor, Izler Solomon, conducted a concert at an army camp outside Tel Aviv while Israeli troops were attacking Arabs at Lydda airport, only an eight-minute jeep ride away. Soldiers returning from battle trickled in between numbers while others left to take over at the front. A few days later the orchestra gave its first concert in Jerusalem in spite of an Arab blockade of the city.

Recently, Bernstein took off by car on a lone trip to the shell-shattered village of Negba to give a piano recital for women and children who had just returned to the village. The recital had to be canceled because in the excitement no one had arranged for a piano.

This week, Lennie Bernstein finished his eighth week as guest conductor, and made ready to return to Manhattan in time to attend the New York Philharmonic-Symphony's benefit concert for the Israel orchestra on Dec. 7. He had enjoyed every minute of his second season of sashaying around Israel. Said he: "I really thought I was bringing Mozart to the desert. But I found it already there."

*Israel had been ordered by the U.N. to evacuate Beersheba the day before the concert, but refused.

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