The New York Times, by Harold C. Schonberg

By Harold C. Schonberg

NOT the Russians but an American orchestra gave the United States premiere of the Symphony No. 13—the so‐called “Babi Yar” Symphony—by Dimitri Shostakovich. The Moscow Symphony Orchestra is in the process of an American tour—indeed, it is in New York City as these lines are being written—but its programs are made up largely of standard 19th and early 20th‐century works. Whatever it is giving us of 20th‐century Russian music is on the safe side—the Eighth Symphony of Shostakovich, well‐known pieces by Prokofiev, and one or two minor tidbits by younger composers. If antibody wants to know what currently is going on in musical Russia, the Moscow Symphony is a good place to stay away from. And so Eugene Ormandy and the Philadelphia Orchestra were responsible, last Jan. 20, for the “Babi Yar” Symphony.

Or it could be that the Moscow Symphony is not letting us know what is going on in current Soviet music for the simple reason that nothing is going on.

There were indications about three years ago that musical life in the Soviet Union was preparing for a quantum jump. The post‐Khrushchev era had seen a relaxation of Socialist Realist doctrine. All during Khrushchev's tenure the official publications devoted to the arts had been full of the necessity of following Leninist theories about the relationship of art to society. Khrushchev himself was a lowbrow as far as his esthetics went. Contemporary art puzzled and irritated him. A cow should look like a cow. Art should ex press the aspirations of the Soviet people. It should be optimistic, it should be clear, everybody should be able to understand it. Those who painted pictures, or composed music, that was more expressive of self than State, were dangerous. Those dreaded words of the Stalin era, “formalism” and “decadent bourgeois capitalistic art,” were still being used while Khrushchev was Premier.

The Brezhnev‐Kosygin period, however, initially saw a shift in attitude. It appeared that the new Soviet leadership had other things on its mind than policing the arts. All of a sudden, magazines took down the banner of Socialist Realism. There was surprisingly little in the way of polemics or direct attacks against “dangerous” esthetic tendencies. Even more: jamming was stopped. Russian intellectuals could listen to the B.B.C., the French Radio, the Voice of America.

Composers rushed to take advantage. They began to hear music that previously had been only a legend. They all rushed out to get tape recorders, and there was scarcely a young composer who did not have his own library or taped performances of new music from all over Europe. In addition, things relaxed to a point where certain composers, hitherto banned, were actually being played. Bartok, Stravinsky, even some serial music appeared. Leningrad was one of the centers of the new activity. In Igor Blashkov it had a young and talented conductor with real sympathy for the avant‐garde, and he worked with the Leningrad Symphony—the best orchestra in the Soviet Union—to a point where the musicians were able to handle Webern and Boulez with real confidence and surety.

New music was not accepted, by any means. The conservatives fought it, and the conservatives were the ones in power at the various music schools and unions of composers. The tiny group of Soviet avant gardists had to go it on their own, without official recognition. But at least Stravinsky and Bartok were studied in the conservatories, and Bartok's Music for Strings, Percussion and Celesta became the most powerful single influence on musical thinking. One heard echoes of it in virtually every score by students and young professionals. It is true that nowhere in the Soviet Union could a composer study 12‐tone composition, and needless to say there was no electronic music studio. But things were moving in that direction.

Then came Czechoslovakia, and with a yellow gleam in the eye of the Soviet right wing. Jamming was resumed. Attempts were made to rehabilitate Stalin. Articles about the duty of Soviet artists began to reappear. Today, from all that one can determine, creative people are desperate. Qualified observers coming out of the Soviet Union report that there has been a crackdown on any kind of adventurism in the arts. Musicians with advanced tastes have been relieved of their positions and transferred to safer places.

Scores of the important Western composers of the post‐war period—Boulez, Stockhausen, even Berg and Webern—are as hard to locate as a Western newspaper or magazine. Which is to say, impossible.

It could thus very well be that the reason the Moscow Symphony has not come to the United States with examples of new Soviet music is that there is no new So viet music. Or, at least, new Soviet music worth introducing to sophisticated audiences of the West. Ever since the middle 1930's, when bureaucrats started to tell Soviet composers how to write, Soviet music has, in effect, become propaganda rather than creative effort. The country that had produced a Glinka, a Mussorgsky, a Tchaikovsky, a Prokofiev and Shostakovich, came to a dead creative halt. Today, apparently, there is nothing; and the hopes aroused by the tiny renaissance three years ago are now squashed.

Shostakovich's “Babi Yar” Symphony is, the lyric, personal‐sounding last movement excepted, typical of the blight that has fallen on Soviet music. Most of it is official music, far less daring than the Yevtushenko poems that accompany the score. The first of those five poems is a fervent plea against the anti‐Semitism so prevalent in Soviet life, and the fourth is a condemnation of the Stalin years and the fear of the knock on the door, the cry in the night. Because of the first poem (anti-Stalinism was permissible in 1962, when the symphony was written), Khrushchev disapproved, and the symphony was hastily withdrawn. It turned up again in 1965, with the “Babi Yar” poem about the Jews somewhat rewritten to Khrushchev's taste, but after a few performances was again dropped.

No wonder Shostakovich, the star Soviet composer, has taken few chances since his “Lady Macbeth of Mzensk” in the middle 1930's. Every time he has shown a bit of enterprise, he has been censured. His symphonies for the most part—and he has composed 15 of them—use a harmonic language and a format that he knows will be accepted. He could have developed into a great composer. Instead he has become a party hack. Reputedly a shy, sweet, nervous man, he seems to have retired into himself, making no appearances in the West any longer (the Soviet officials say that his health is bad). He continues to write music that has all the virtues of Socialist Realism: optimism, an effort to hit a mass audience, avoidance of “cosmopolitanism,” symbols of “positive heroic virtues,” little use of dissonance, constantly implied patriotism. He does all this very skillfully. But it is no longer very stimulating, or even very good, music. Seldom have the words of Alfred North Whitehead been proved so painfully, true: “The secret of art lies in its freedom.”

By Harold C. Schonberg

ANDRE WATTS, Pianist. At Philharmonic Hall.

Valses oubliees Nos. 1 and 3; Sonata in B minor; Six Grandes Etudes after Paganini…. Liszt

IT was with the Liszt E flat Piano Concerto that the 16‐year‐old Andre Watts became famous in 1963. Now a veteran at the age of 23, he gave a concert yesterday afternoon in Philharmonic Hall that was devoted entirely to Liszt. He played the first and third of the”Valses oubliees,” the B minor Sonata and the six “Paganini” Etudes. There was less than an hour of playing on the entire program, playing the problems were considerable, and Mr. Watts had a busy afternoon.

He nas many of the attributes of a major Liszt pianist—dash, flair and confidence; a very big technique; a piano tone that can reach considerable volume without banging; and, above all, a real delight in the physical process of overcoming va1st difficulties. That involvement with the purely physical is integral to much of Liszt—the daredevil feeling of taking a chance amid the cascades of notes. A careful pianist can never be a great Liszt pianist.

Throughout the afternoon Mr. Watts took his chances. Sometimes they came off brilliantly, sometimes they missed. The recital on the whole was the work of an exciting, though not fully formed, pianist. Definitely the flair was there. Equally definitely, the playing in spots was apt to be hysterical rather than controlled.

Part of the trouble was a lack of discipline, both emotional and technical. There were spots where Mr. Watts let himself be carried away, where he would put his foot on the pedal and whale at the keyboard, with notes fall ing on the wayside like a platoon hit by shrapnel. That happened at the end of “La Campanella,” and also the big octave climax toward the end of the B minor Sonata.

Pait of the trouble was the fast tempo. No experienced pianist, no matter how big his technique, would charge into the writing so recklessly. Disaster can only result. Mr. Watts has yet to learn that a slightly slower tempo would have made an equally grand effect without any voltage drop.

There was much to admire in the recital. Especially in the B minor Sonata, the ardor, athleticism and youthful impatience with which Mr. Watts tackled the work were very engaging. He also had some original ideas about accents and phrasings; and, aside from the octaves at the climax, there was only one real miscalculation. That was in the long section before the fugato, where Mr. Watts started the ritard much too soon. The music tended to fall apart.

He tackled the “Paganini” Etudes with immense relish. Considering the daring of his playing, one did not mind few dropped notes or blurred passages. As he matures, Mr. Watts will discover that there are additional things in the music besides bravura. But he is well on his way, and there could be no denying the passages of real brilliance that he carried off. Especially notable were some of the feathery scale pas sages in the E flat Etude. These were instances of remarkable control.

One other thing should be mentioned, and it is important. Mr. Watts communicates. He has that kind of personal magic that makes an Event of a concert, and Philharmonic Hall had the electric feeling that occurs only when an important’ artist is at work. It cannot be taught, this mysterious transmission from stage to audience, and Mr. Watts has it in very large measure. Hence the sold‐out house, the hanging on every note, the enthusiasm, the cheers. If a few dozen of this kind of artists were around, there would be nothing wrong with the concert business.

By Harold C. Schonberg

IT is not everyday that one has the chance of watching 100 cellists simultaneously in action. Not even every other day. So the morning of April 15 saw us in Carnegie Hall, where Pablo Casals was scheduled to rehearse his centenary of cellists in his own “Sardana.” We got there early to have a talk with Arthur Aaron. He is the personnel manager of the American Symphony Orchestra, and as such was in charge of the proceedings.

Aaron is a pleasant, energetic, medium‐sized man, balding, with a small moustache and the left‐hand spread of a cellist, which is not surprising, considering that he is a cellist. He said that Mrs. Samuel Rubin, wife of the president of the American Symphony Orchestra, had dreamed up the idea; a benefit concert for the orchestra's children's concerts and for the United Nations School, during the course of which Casals would face his centenary of cellists.

Letters to cellists were sent out last February. Casals pupils were asked to participate. Members of the Marl boro group were invited, and of the Puerto Rico Festival, and so on. As word got out, Aaron began to be deluged with requests. Many letters came from the West Coast and from overseas. Cellists were panting to participate, at some financial expense to themselves. No fee was involved, and everybody had to pay his own way. “And,” Aaron pointed out, “the cello is charged a half‐fare on an airplane.” In all, about 175 cellists clamored to join the group. Ib Hermann from Copenhagen was accepted. He plays in the Radio Orchestra there, and felt that his life would not be complete unless he worked with Casals at least once. Another player came from Japan. “But,” Aaron said, “we won't count that as a trip just for this concert, because he was planning to come here anyway.”

Certain cellists were not invited. Aaron did not want to say too much about this, but there seems to have been a feeling that no stage on earth would be big enough to accommodate such virtuosos as, say, Piatigorsky, Fournier, Starker, Nelsova, Rostropovich. Suppose they all wanted to be the concertmaster? We thought of a brief conversation we had had the previous day.

On the street we ran into an acquaintance who was going to be one of the 100. The two of us spoke of this and that, and the question came up: suppose you draw the last stand in the last row?

“I won't play.”

“But somebody has to be in the rear.”

“I know.”

“So suppose you draw a rear position?”

“I won't play.”

When the full complement of 100 was determined, Aaron began to lay out the positions. “Some old‐timers, real pros,” he said, “actually volunteered for the back positions. Naoum Benditzky, Alan Shulman, Daniel Saidenberg, Janos Scholz. They wanted to avoid trouble from the start. Others...” He shrugged philosophically. He decided to put up front 16 faces familiar to Casals, so that when the 93‐year‐old veteran came out he would immediately feel at home. Then there had to be a homogenous mixture of the 70 men and 30 women. “We natur urally couldn't have all the women together, could we?” Relatively inexperienced youngsters were put on stands with old professionals. Aaron put himself—he wanted to play—at the bottom, far in the rear. Nobody was going to accuse him of taking advantage of his position.

The morning of the 15th arrived. Aaron had put up a large bulletin board at the 56th Street entrance to Carnegie Hall. (We sneaked a look to see where our temperamental friend was going to be. He had drawn a position close to the front.) At 9:30 A.M., cellists started to drift in for the 10 o'clock rehearsal. They grouped in front of the bulletin board with suspicious faces, studying their location, and then went into the hall. Aaron was on stage, the genial host. He knew everybody. But almost everybody knew everybody else. Some had not seen each other for years. Old friendships were renewed. There was the usual linguistic babble when musicians get together. The young cellists rushed on stage to start practicing their parts. The veterans lingered, talking. Just before 10, the first cellist of the group, Bernard Greenhouse arrived. Everybody was on hand except three players from Philadelphia, held up by a late train. They eventually turned up.

Daniel Saidenberg started the rehearsal. Casals was not due until 11. “With these characters,” Saidenberg said, “I will only beat time. Anyway, Casals will have his own ideas about the piece.”

How right he was!

Casals made his appearance at 11. Everybody stood. Slowly, slowly, he made his way to the podium. “Ah... ah...” he was mumbling. There were tears in his eyes. “Ah... ah... very moving, very moving.” There were handshakes. Casals mounted the podium and made a short speech in an almost inaudible voice. “Very thankful ... thankful.” He settled himself and asked for a baton. Aaron rushed to find one. Casals took the baton, slowly looked around, lifted it.

“Now!” he roared.

He really did roar it. Suddenly the voice, body and facial expressions were those of a young man. Casals was home, where he belonged, and the years dropped away. The orchestra played the first phrase. “No!” Casals sang it to show what the wanted. “Rum, baba, ta tata. Rhythm! Rhythm! Now!” The measure was repeated, and Casals again stopped everybody. “Don't be lazy! Give character! The first note has no energy! Ba‐ROOM!” he yelled, bringing down the baton. “Ba‐ROOM!”

In short, it was a typical Casals rehearsal. As it proceeded, Casals began to shed his clothes. “I want to hear taka taka taka!” Off came his light blue jacket. “The third stand! Why do I not hear the third stand?” He pushed up the sleeves of his white sweatshirt. “Where is the expression, the expression?” He tugged at his collar and loosened his tie.

The rehearsal was fascinating not only because of the presence of Casals and his manner of work, but even more because here on stage was a living, breathing, representative of 19th‐century conducting and musicianship. Casals is the antithesis of today's objective, clear‐cut, note‐perfect conductors. He is an intuitive musician, an inspirational one. He wants musicians to read between the notes—to do much more than merely play them. Time and again he stopped the orchestra to explain his theories.

“Rule, general rule,” he would say. “It is not written in the music, but when notes go up, make always a little crescendo, a natural crescendo.” When the notes go down, decrescendo. Always a swell to the line, always play each phrase for its expressive value. Avoid flatness. Don't do things by rote. “When your bow is too short, change it! Change the bow! Change the bow!” Play with expression! “Molto cantabile! Dolce! SING!” Casals sounded like Toscanini.

At noon he called for a 15‐minute break. At 12:15 he resumed, but only for 15 minutes. By this time the musicians had an idea of what he was driving at, and when the “Sardana” was twice played through in its entirety to Casals's satisfaction, he ended the rehearsal. Everybody packed their instruments and went up the clubroom, where punch and hors d'oeuvres were served. Casals, after a half‐hour rest, joined them. chair was placed for him and he sat in it, placidly puffing his pipe, accepting homage, speaking in a whisper. Again he was an old man. Some young cellists got together to discuss him. At the beginning of the rehearsal they had been, shall we say, a little tolerant. At the end of the rehearsal, perspiring and working hard, they were in no mood to dismiss Casals lightly.

“It's a matter of sound,” one of them said. “Sound, timing, romanticism. He's wonderful. He's not an I.B.M. machine. Not Casals.”

That night, in Philharmonic Hall, Casals conducted the “Sardana.” He brought down his baton, and the first note had character. The bass lines went ba‐ROOM and the melodies went rum, baba, to tata, and everybody in the hall heard taka taka taka.

By Harold C. Schonberg

A “MOSTLY MOZART FESTIVAL,” they are calling it, and it starts tomorrow in Philharmonic Hall, to run the entire month. This kind of thing has been going on in August at Philharmonic Hall ever since 1966 (except for last summer, when Philharmonic Hall was closed for an acoustic restoration); and, as before, it is being backed by the Lincoln Center Fund. From the beginning the series has provided a welcome interlude in the cheerless New York summer months. The finest music has been presented, in an air‐conditioned hall, at relatively low prices. Perhaps the public response has not always been as gratifying as the sponsors would have wished, but they feel that there is a real need for this kind of series, as indeed there is, and they are prepared to persevere.

It's “Mostly Mozart” this August because the programs are being broadened to include works by Haydn and Schubert. The music of Mozart still predominates, but most programs mix the three composers. And all programs are cannily devised, with the better‐known works of the three masters alternating with music that may be almost as great but is heard less often. The mixture includes symphonies and concertos down to small chamber works and piano four hands. Thus, on the Tuesday program, the ever‐popular “Trout” Quintet of Schubert can be heard — and also six Scottish and Welsh airs for tenor and piano trio by Haydn. The Mozart Requiem, on Aug. 28 and 29, will be the most ambitious project in the festival. The most unusual will take place on Aug. 13, with the American premiere of a German film, made in 1966, named “The Life of Mozart.” This is described as a feature‐length documentary using

Several of the participating musicians and groups will be heard in New York for the first time. These include Mario Bernardi, the conductor of the National Arts Center in Ottawa; Leon Fleisher, who will be heard not as a pianist but as a conductor; the Allegri String Quartet of London; and the pianist Geza Anda, who will conduct the early G minor Symphony of Mozart and then conduct two concertos from the keyboard. One of those concertos is described as the “Elvira Madigan” Concerto. Dear God. (The writer of the Mostly Mozart brochure is inclined toward exuberance. We learn that the Mozart Requiem, “together with Bach's B minor Mass,” remains “the most sublime of all musical compositions.”)

These programs contain attractive music of the highest standard, performed by expert musicians. It will be interesting to see what attitude New York takes to “Mostly Mozart.” The last year has seen the concert business in the doldrums (and also the bottom falling out of the classical record market). Nobody has come up with a real answer for the phenomenon. Inflation and the economic woes of America have been offered as an explanation. The scarcity of musicians who have the personality to attract a wide public following is another hypothesis. Some put the blame on the international angst: war, Vietnam, the Near East, the Bomb, racism, the breakdown of old values. How can one listen to music with these pressures on the mind? Has music relevance any more? So runs the argument.

That “relevance” concept is constantly cropping up, though I for one entirely fail to see its relevance. Often it is made by people who seem to have little identification with music. Those people do not go around saying that Rembrandt has no relevance today, or Shakespeare, or Proust. It is only against music that the charge is leveled, and there generally is a corollary to the effect that the only music with “relevance” today is rock or one of its derivatives.

And that, I think, is nonsense. The great music of the past has, in these crazy times, more “relevance” than ever before. It is a healing force, a restorative, and it operates on many levels. It is, on one level, an idealization of what mankind can aspire to. It is, on another, the ultimate triumph of logic. And it is needed today more than ever before. Immersion in great music means contact with extremely powerful minds, minds that worked toward an ideal. Listening to the music of Bach, of Mozart and Haydn, of Beethoven and Schubert, means becoming involved with ethical as well as tonal and esthetic ideals. One emerges from the experience a better man, a calmer man. This is not escape. It is rejuvenation.

That is the relevance of great music, and there can be no greater. The great composer, because he is also a ‘great individualist with great imagination, brings to his technique a certain vision, and this vision is so strong that the great majority of listeners, no matter how untrained, can identify with it. That is why so much of today's music really lacks relevance. Technicians are all over the place. But musical creators with an all‐encompassing vision are in very short supply, and the public realizes it. It is a fact that despite all the publicity, all the lobbying, all the pitiful demands for support, all the appeals to the contemporary conscience—despite all this, hardly any music composed after 1945 has been able to enter the international repertory. It is not relevant music. But the music of Beethoven is relevant as ever.

Can it be that those who deride music of the past as “museum music,” who call the concert an archaeological institution, are only betraying their own intellectual poverty? That, and catering to their own special interests? Very often, the strongest attacks on music of the past are made by composers whose music is not played. Their ideas have achieved a certain fashion in some intellectual circles. But that will pass. Fashions come and go, the immutables remain. So go to “Mostly Mozart” at Philharmonic Hall, and be rejuvenated. There will be more relevance there than a solid year of rock at Fillmore East.

By Harold C. Schonberg

WITHIN the space of two days, two great conductors died—Sir John Barbirolli, and then George Szell. Both had been active until a short time ago, and there was no hint that they would be taken from us. Szell was 73, but he was trim, athletic‐looking and energetic. He always took good care of himself, and seldom did illness of any kind force him to cancel a concert. Barbirolli, who was 70 years old when he died, always was more the bon vivant than Szell, but he too appeared to be a bounding indestructible.

Both conductors were masters, and no two could have been more different. They took almost opposing paths to their Parnassus. Szell was of the Toscanini school—a precisionist, an authoritarian, a demanding taskmaster, a musician greatly interested in the details that went to support a musical structure. Barbirolli was a more Inspirational type of conductor, one who never worried very much if details were obscured as long as the spirit of the music was conveyed. ‘Where Szell represented classic restraint, Barbirolli was very much the extroverted romanticist. Where Szell maintained a taut line and a tight ship, Barbirolli was relaxed and easygoing in his interpretations, though without ever losing emotional discipline. Barbirolli was a romantic, true, but never a self‐indulgent one.

New York got the chance to estimate Barbirolli in 1937 when he, almost unknown, was chosen to succeed Arturo Toscanini as head of the New York Philharmonic. Much has been written about that episode, and some have concluded that Barbirolli returned to England as an out‐and‐out failure. This was not the case. The young conductor, then 37, made it apparent from the beginning that he had certain decided assets—drive, ebullience, a natural and uncomplicated way of making music. He was especially impressive as a Brahms conductor, and one well remembers the ardor and bigness of spirit with which he addressed himself, to the ‘D major Symphony.

But there was no denying the fact that under his leadership the New York Philharmonic lost the tight en semble that Toscanini had given it. Precision ‐conducting was never Barbirolli's strength; he represented something entirely different. Even had he wanted to attempt a Toscanini‐like approach he could not have succeeded. He was too inexperienced at that stage of his career, and could not impose his will upon the temperamental virtuosos of the Philharmonic. So after his contract was up he went back to England, to take over the Halle Orchestra. For many years he did not return to the United States. Word drifted over about the good work he was doing in Manchester, about how enormously Barbirolli had developed as man and musician: There also were phonograph records to admire. But to most Americans Barbirolli was forgotten.

In the meantime Szell began to assume great importance in the American musical scene, especially after he took over the Cleveland Orchestra. His conducting was not to everybody's liking. Nobody disputed his command over an orchestra, or his immense knowledge, or his integrity. Yet to some listeners there was something cold about his interpretations, something forbidding and devoid of humanity. Szell was accused of pedanticism, of sterility, of ignoring the big line in favor of detail. His admirers, however—and they far outnumbered his detractors—kept insisting that not since Toscanini had there been a conductor of such drive, clarity and bigness.

And, indeed, Toscanini and Szell had much in common. There are two main lines in conducting. One stemming from Wagner and Hans von Billow, and extending through such twentieth‐century conductors as Wilhelm Furtwangler, is highly romantic and personal, marked by constant fluctuation of tempo and broad expressive devices. The other, from Mendelssohn through Weingartner, Richard Strauss and Toscanini, is of a much more objective nature. Romantic excrescences are purged, and the idea is to let the notes themselves do the interpreting, the conductor acting as organizer. Conductors of this school do not look for “meaning.” They present the notes, organizing them into structures. Typical of this attitude was Toscanini's comment about the first movement of the Beethoven “Eroica” Symphony. “Some say Napoleon,” snorted Toscanini. “Some say Hitler, some Mussolini. Bah! For me it is only allegro con brio.”

Szell would have agreed, Like Toscanini, he felt it was his job as a con ductor to see to it that everything in a score was heard, that steady rhythm was kept, that enseMble was as perfect as human fingers, lips and brains could manage. All that done, the interpreta tion would take care of itself.

But there is more to it than that, and it is the mysterious X factor that separates the good technician from the great interpreter. No musician, no matter how “objective” he is,’ no matter how literally he approaches the printed note, can keep his own personality divorced from his music‐making. One is a function of the other. Szell had a strong, even arrogant, personality, and he also had a patrician’ musical mind, and everything he was reflected itself in his conducting. It was sinewy end powerful conducting, with the kind or logic that creates an architectonic structure rather than a series of episodes.

It followed that.Szell, with his kind of logic, his severe approach, his feeling for structure, would be most successful in music where the formal aspects are important. His specialty was music of the German and Austrian composers. Sometimes he conducted. French music, and it was all in place, every. detail burnished, but a subtle quality in this literature eluded him. His work here licked charm. Curiously, though, he had an affinity for Verdi. His blazing performance of the “Manzoni” Requiem gave the lie to those who accused Szell of being a, calculating machine. Not since Toscanini had there been a performance of equivalent passion coupled to sheer control.

Barbirolli returned to the United States as conductor of the Houston Symphony and then as guest conductor of other groups. He had developed into one of the ‘world's greatest conductors. And his repertory was all‐inclusive. Szell, for instance, knew everything, but he avoided great blocks of the repertory. Barbirolli programmed everything‐the Geiman school, Eiger and Delius, Debussy and Ravel, Tchaikovsky and the other Russians, and he even started a series of Italian operas on, records. If he did not have Szell's absolute precision, he had more charm, and there was a wonderfully genial spirit to his conducting.

And it was big, vital conducting. There were no idiosyncrasies. It was music‐making that went along in a sturdy, healthy, colorful manner, with a large amount of romanticism in it. Few conductors were so successful with the nineteenth ‐century masterpieces. Barbirolli, without ever indulging himself or sounding, affected, instinctively knew when to slow up or speed, when to introduce variation of line and rhythm. His conducting fell midway between the ultraromanticism of a Furtwangler and the objectivity of a Toscanini. Just as there was a great deal of Toscanini in Szell, so there was a great deal of Sir Thomas Beecham in Barbirolli. He and Beecham both had an urbane, civilized attitude toward music, reflected in interpretations of controlled freedom in which the players were given plenty of leeway. Szell, one felt, approached his players as though they were potential criminals. Barbirolli approached them as colleagues, without ever losing his authority over them.

The world of music will miss both: the authoritarian, profound George Szell, he of the perfect ear and flawless technique, the master of rhythms, balances and textures, the creator of structures in sound; and the more mercurial Sir John Barbirolli, the warm hearted, genial romantic, he of the big line, the delicate color shades, the man as much of emotion as of logic. As interpreters, Szell and Barbirolli were far apart, but both were true to their ideal. In their own way they illuminated for us, incandescently, the meaning of the notes that great men put on paper.

By Harold C. Schonberg

SANTA FE, N. M., Aug. 13 —Now Luciano Berio, one of the heroes of the international avant‐garde, has composed an opera. With pristine simplicity he has named it “Opera,” though the title is not to be construed as opera opera. Rather it is the plural of “opus.” It received its world premiere here last night, and I am afraid that nobody liked it.

Its reception was startlingly similar to the reception of Mr. Berio's “This Means, That” last season at Carnegie Hall. Last night there were a few catcalls and boos, some derisive laughter, a few cheers. But the score was so obviously weak that neither Mr. Berio's admirers nor his detractors felt inclined to stage a demonstration. At the end of the opera there was a tiny, tiny spatter of apathetic applause, and everybody hastily walked out, like mourners from a funeral parlor, avoiding each other's eyes. There was not a single curtain call, not a single cry for cast or composer. It was a fiasco, and one felt sorry for the Santa Fe Opera and its participants.

But on the other hand, Mr. Berio was asking for it. “Opera” shows a poverty of musical imagination, and it contains every cliche of the post‐serial school and the environmental theater. Vocal settings had the intelligibility of porpoise language or Linear B. The dramatic contributions by the Open Theater Ensemble—and that occupied much of the opera—went with the finesse of a production at South Cornball Junior High.

They are something, these Open Theater boys and girls. They represent anti‐Establishmentarianism and protest. This they suggest by rolling on the ground or standing with their mouths open so wide that grapefruit could be dumped into them without bulging their cheeks. When they talk, poor kids, they cannot be heard with any clarity beyond the 10th row of the auditorium. If theater means any sort of verbal communication, these Open Theater people should promptly go back to school.

Mr. Berio has supplied the libretto apart from the Open Theater routines. It is a libretto on various levels of meaning. An avant‐garde composer would as soon vote Republican as be caught without his various levels of meaning. There is plenty of obfuscation in “Opera,” but its basic message is clear enough. Mankind is going to hell on a bobsled. Man's sense of direction has been lost; he is an automaton; his machinery, as represented by the sinking of the Titanic, operates independently of him. He is on late watch in the death ward.

All right. It amounts to an adolescent wail, the way it is presented, but an opera never lives or dies by its book. It is the music that counts. And most of the music in “Opera” is pretty bad. It produces the usual post‐serial gestures, which are fatal for vocal writing because of the dislocation of syllable and accent. An electronic score supplements the live musicians and makes the kind of unpitched wooshes that were the joy of the Columbia‐Princeton lab a decade back.

“Opera” runs about an hour and 90 minutes. Mr. Berio did not overextend himself. About half of the work is Open Theater stuff, in which there is no music at all or only background effects. Some of the actual music has been drawn (though reworked) from previous Berio scores. Monteverdi's “Orfeo” plays a part. But the total effect of the music is that of extremely conventional, old‐fashioned post-serialism.

At least there was one thing to admire. The orchestra, under the direction of Dennis Russell Davies, was brilliant. Mr. Davies is a young man from the Juilliard School, and his own clear identification with the post-serial idiom sparked the orchestra into tremendous feats. But Mr. Davies had precious little to work with. And so the levels of meaning were peeled off, one by one, and finally nothing was left.

There are, by the way, two nude scenes in “Opera,” one with a girl, one with a boy. The boy has to undress on stage. Originally he was to face the audience. Then it was decided that he turn his back, and those at the open dress rehearsal on Tuesday got the buttocks view.

At last night's performance the actor took it upon himself to stand sidewise, thus making the best of both worlds. It is reported that John Crosby, the head of the Santa Fe Opera, was furious.

By Harold C. Schonberg

ON Saturday evening, at Hunter College, the International Piano Library is sponsoring a benefit for itself. At least 10 prominent pianists will foregather to play singly and in combination, proceeds (hopefully) to go to the I.P.L., thereby furthering its desire to carry on with its collection, its bulletins, its scholarly work, its reissues of incredibly rare records of great pianists of the past. And thereby hangs a tale.

Several months ago the International Piano Library was robbed. Thieves broke in. What they did not find was money. The International Piano Library has always subsisted on a diet of dandelions and blue‐eyed scallops. The baffled thieves instead found about $200,000 worth of rare piano records and rolls. They must have looked at each other. What were nice thieves doing in a place like this? In fury, they set fire to the International Piano Library.

By the time the firemen arrived, a Steinway concert grand player piano, one of the few left in the world, had all but been cremated. Tools, data, recording and office equipment, bookkeeping records—all were gone. Fortunately none of the rare records was harmed (the 1904 G. & T. Hofmanns, for instance, or the only known copy of Grieg himself playing his “Humoresque” on a disc worth about $1,000), though it took weeks to clean and dry them out. In effect, the International Piano Library was destroyed, for it does its valuable work, and keeps alive, through goodwill. With its subscription lists gone, with its stock of reissued records melted, with its bulletins gone up in flames, there was, seemingly, an end to its function.

Except that it refused to fold up. Gregor Benko, the tall young man who runs I.P.L. virtually single‐handed, sent out an SOS. Friends of I.P.L. responded, and about $3,000 was raised. That took care of repairing or replacing some of the electronic equipment that was ruined (amplifiers, tape decks, speakers). That also took care of the $3,000. I.P.L. was broke again. It was then that Benko got the idea of a free‐for‐all concert featuring pianists.

For this there were precedents. In 1921 some of the world's greatest pianists, 15 of them, including Friedman, Bauer, Gabrilowitsch, Lhevinne, Back haus and Grainger, gave a mammoth benefit concert for the ill and indigent Moritz Moszkowski. Moszkowski was a pianist‐composer who composed elegant trifles that were in the repertory of all pianists of the day (and still should be). Two of the high spots of that affair were Moszkowski's “Spanish Dances” and the Schumann “Carnaval.”
 

In the first, all 15 pianists played together, conducted by Walter Damrosch. In his book, “My Musical Life,” Damrosch wrote amusingly of the event. It seems that each of those great virtuosos had his own ideas about tempo and interpretation. Furthermore the music was too simple for them, and they improvised all over the place. Finally, Damrosch, as famous for his urbanity as for his conducting, put his foot down. He told the pianists they were undoubtedly the greatest in the world, and that their interpretations also were undoubtedly the greatest in the world; “but as they represented 15 different grades and shades of interpretation, I intended to take the matter into my own hands and they would have to follow my beat whether they liked my tempo or not. This was greeted with a roar of approval.”

In the “Carnaval,” the pianists drew lots for the individual pieces. Those who drew the hard sections looked smug; those who caught simple things like “Aveu” cried. At the finale of the “Carnaval,” the big march, all 15 played in unison. There were other goodies on the program, such as Messrs. Bauer, Gabrilowitsch and Schelling adjusting themselves before one keyboard and playing Rossini's “La Gazza Ladra” Overture for six hands. The entire en semble closed the concert with the familiar “Marche Militaire” by Schubert.

About $15,000 was raised for Moszkowski. He, never known for his thrift, went through that sum in short order. Three years later, on Dec. 30, 1924, an other concert of a similar nature was given for his aid (and for other charities). This time the pianists included Novaes (who has been announced for next Saturday's concert), Hess, Siloti, Levitzki, Brailowsky and Friedberg, in addition to many who had participated in the 1921 event. Not until 1951, when the Steinway piano firm celebrated its 100th anniversary with a perihelion of pianists on the Carnegie Hall stage, was there to be anything like it.

Benko, trying to assemble a cast for his concert, found that many pianists were sympathetic but, like Arrau and others, were playing thousands of miles away on Oct. 3. He also found that some pianists, especially those concentrating on virtuoso romantic literature, regard each other, if not exactly the way Golda Meir regards Gamal Abdul Nasser, something the way Elizabeth I viewed Philip of Spain, or Arturo Toscanini regarded Serge Koussevitzky. And vice versa.

He finally secured the services of Fernando Valenti, Jesus Maria Sanroma, Earl Wild, Bruce Hungerford, Ivan Davis, Alicia de Larrocha (she is president of the International Piano Library), Gunnar Johansen, Raymond Lewenthal, Jorge Bolet, Rosalyn Tureck and Guiomar Novaes. All are coming from far and wide to donate their playing. Beverly Sills has promised to appear, and not as a pianist. A thick cloud of secrecy has been placed over her contribution, but spies report that she is going to camp it up with some colora tura parody. Similarly the ultra‐serious Tureck is going to do such things to her beloved Bach as play an invention upside down, or something like that. The program and, indeed, the participants, have not been fully arranged at the time of writing. Benko is still scouting for talent. He is going to have all of the pianists play together in, among other things, the Chopin Polonaise in A flat, and the “Children's Symphony” by Karl Reinecke. In the Reinecke work there will be assistants on toy instruments. Betty Comden, Adolph Green and Joseph Machlis already are practicing their parts on the kazoo, five‐and dime clarinet and whatever. Benko even went around ask ing some music critics to participate. Silly boy. Everybody knows that music critics cannot even hear music, much less read it.

The phone has just rung. It is Benko. He says that Ned Rorem will appear in one of the specialty numbers. He says that the final works will be conducted with Liszt's own baton, borrowed for the occasion from its owner, the Mannes College of Music. He says that de Larrocha, Lewenthal and Johansen will play Carl Czerny's “Fantasia for Six Hands on Scottish Airs.” He says he's not allowed to say what Sills will sing, but don't miss it. (Strangled sounds over the phone denoting suppressed mirth.) He says that Novaes has decided to play Gottschalk's “Variations on the Brazilian National Anthem,” and that she is being flown from Brazil by Varig Airlines just for that. He says that he still has indeterminate promises from other pianists.

Just how long is this concert going to last?

“Maybe all night,” says Benko, gleefully.

By Harold C. Schonberg

Daniel Barenboim conducted the Philadelphia Orchestra at Philharmonic Hall on Tuesday night, and it was hard to believe that so young a man was creating such formidable structures in sound. He has come up as a pianist, and only recently has turned to the podium, but it is on the podium where he belongs. Certainly he conducts with much more freedom and authority than he plays the piano.

His conducting may not be to everybody's taste. He favors slow, deliberate tempos, and he uses a great deal of rhythmic fluctuation. But his personality is so strong, his style so naturally big, his control over the players so powerful, that he is able to be his own man. At the age of 28, he has arrived at the point where agreement or disagreement with his interpretations is immaterial. This is a musician with something to say, and what he has to say is important. Thus one might argue over fine points —a tempo here, an accentua tion there—but not with the basic strength of his ideas.

The program contained Beethoven's Second Symphony, Schumann's Fourth and the Elgar Cello Concerto with Jacqueline Du Pre as soloist. The three pieces as interpreted by Mr. Barenboim had much in common, in their strong rhythm, robust approach and unusual freedom.

Mr. Barenboim's rhythm is flawless. There are no accented upbeats in his work, nor is there ever a slackening of tension. Even when, in the slow movement of the Beethoven, and throughout the Schumann, Mr. Barenboim used tempo fluctuations, the basic meter remained intact. This kind of rhythmic control is unusual. It is seldom practiced today, though it goes back to the line from Wagner to Furtwangler. Conductors of the more objective Toscanini school generally avoid it.

As for Mr. Barenboim's robust quality, that does not exclude delicacy. In the slow movement of the Elgar concerto he had the orchestra playing at an eerie pianissimo, to match the pianissimo Miss Du Pré was drawing from the cello. She played beautifully throughout. This is “her” concerto, and she always has been happy in it. It is hard to think of a more persuasive exponent of this extremely beautiful, tender work.

In the Schumann Fourth Symphony, Mr. Barenboim was as impressive as he had been in the Elgar, where his accompaniment was dead center accurate. The Schumann Fourth is a romantic work that needs a romantic interpretation. Traditions of performance practice in romantic music have all but vanished, and musicians to day have much more feeling for the classic style. It may be that Mr. Barenboim has the ability to restore some of that tradition.

What he did was to con duct in a manner that had unity in variety. Avoiding the spasmodic stop‐and‐change gear rhythms that many musicians consider “romantic,” Mr. Barenboim took the D minor Symphony in one grand sweep, changing details within the line. He left plenty of breathing space, he had enough confidence in his instincts .to insert ritards where the meaning of the music so indicated (and never mind whether or not they were marked in the score), and his alert rhythm kept the music in constant flow.

There were moments where he could have taken faster tempos, and other moments where the markings were a shade too emphatic. But the important thing is that the symphony moved, and the Schumann Fourth, with its constant violin diddling and repeated sections (not all of which Mr. Barenboim took), is a hard work to make move. This was ardent con ducting—big, bold and soaring, with a perfectly gauged sprint in the last few measures. With such control, and vitality of music‐making, it is rather silly to call Mr. Barenboim a major talent. He already has arrived; he is here.

By Harold C. Schonberg

Half of the Evenings for New Music program, on Wednesday at the Carnegie Recital Hall, was made up of routine academic ditherings. But then, after the intermission, came “Eight Songs for a Mad King” by Peter Maxwell‐Davies, and suddenly the audience was thrust into the presence of a creative mind.

“Eight Songs for a Mad King” is a mad piece of music, hard to describe. Mr. Maxwell‐Davies, a British avant‐garde composer, used as a text eight poems by Randolph Stow. These poems use actual words of the insane King George III. Sample: “Dear Elms, Oaks, Beeches, Strangling Ivy, green snakes of Ivy, Pythons. God guard trees. Blue, yellow, green is the world like a chained man's bruise. I think of God. God also is a King.”

Weird, frightening and powerful these words, and also touched with an awful kind of poetry. A composer who is going to set this kind of material cannot do it in an orthodox manner. Fortunately, Mr. Maxwell‐Davies does not have an orthodox kind of mind.

He has conceived the eight songs as a kind of theater piece, in which the mad King goes to the stage from the rear of the auditorium, moves among the, musicians, occasionally sits on an upholstered chair. The vocal line is post‐Pierrot Lunaire—very post. It has passages in falsetto and the lowest of chest registers; it makes the singer (or actor, if you will) go into screeching, rumbling, mewling, squealing, squeaking sounds. These are used in an amazingly expressive manner. They also end up gloriously unintelligible as far as the words themselves are concerned. Elsewhere, the verbal settings are more direct, in clear declamation.

As for the music, it is the background music of a composer with a real feeling for the theater. The score, for flute, clarinet, violin, cello, piano/harpsichord and percussion, is hard to describe. It is completely dissonant most of the time, avoids serial clichés, constantly comments on the words and the action. Every now and then there are parodistic elements—a touch of burlesque jazz, or a perky treatment of 18th‐century music, or an English dance tune..

It is a score that is closely tied up with the action and the meanings of the ‘words, and this kind of score can not exist by itself. Mr. Maxwell‐Davies has created his own kind of Gesamtkunstwerk. And it works. “Eight Songs for a Mad King” is a theater piece that has direct communication, and it hits the listener like a collective shriek from Bedlam.

The composer was fortu nate in his protagonist. Julius Eastman recited the poems. He is a black pianist‐composer currently teaching at the State University in Buffalo. For the occasion his face was made up as an old man; and he wore regal going‐to‐bed clothes. His voice is unusual. Obviously, he is not a trained singer, but he had the style and the vocal command; and also there was a lot of noble ham in his stage posturings as he lurched around like a mad Lear. Toward the end he snatched the violin from the player, tore off its strings and smashed it. We used to get violin burnings in the old (ca. 1955) days, from the Cage group. That was Dada. This was theater.

There were other things on the program, such as Alcides Lanza's “Penetrations V” (live musicians and tape); William Hellermann's “Formata” (trombone doodlings in post-serial style); and Jan Williams's “Dream Lesson” (tape, plus swinging lights in a dark hall). All of these were typical products of the New Academicism, with a lifespan of a half‐dozen performances. Maybe.