Ring in the New

To his admirers in the nation's capital, tall, husky Conductor Hans Kindler is one of the U.S.'s great conductors (and, say some Washington ladies, "the most beautiful man"). To his detractors, he is a man "who can't even beat a waltz," a fellow who likes to chop up scores: one Washingtonian calls Kindler's National Symphony Orchestra "the only orchestra in the world to give a ten-minute performance of Petrouchka."*

Last fall the detractors won. The symphony's directors offered Netherlands-born Hans Kindler a new contract with one hand and evidently a hint with the other: if he accepted, they might not be able to raise enough money for another season. Kindler chose to resign from the orchestra he had founded and directed for 18 years.

This week in Constitution Hall, Hans Kindler will conduct his farewell concert. When it is over, he will be off to Scandinavia, "teeming with ideas, as usual," he said. As far as he was concerned, the fate of Washington's orchestra was "in the lap of the gods."

Actually, the orchestra's fate was in a mortal lap. Next season, the orchestra's 38-year-old First Cellist Howard Mitchell will be wielding the baton instead of the bow. Handsome Howard Mitchell might need some Olympian help at that, however, since there were indications that it might not be forthcoming from some of the usual backers of the orchestra. One ardent Kindler supporter, who chipped in $41,000 for the orchestra last year, had pointedly limited himself to $10 in his first contribution this year.

New Conductor Mitchell, one of the U.S.'s youngest, knows his orchestra and its instruments pretty well. He started out as a hot-lips trumpeter, was persuaded at 15 to switch to cello by the high-school orchestra instructor back in Sioux City, Iowa. Six months later, he had won a statewide cello contest. After scholarships at Baltimore's Peabody Conservatory and at Curtis, he settled down to buzz and bow under Kindler. Two years ago, when Kindler was ill, Mitchell got his first chance to conduct the National Symphony, made an able understudy's success. His appointment made Washington's the eighth major orchestra in the U.S. (among 25 with budgets of $100,000 or more) with an American-born musician in the conductor's post.

* Usual performance time: 34 minutes.

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