Detroiter Satisfies

WANTED, by the New York Symphony --a conductor. For three seasons now, since Walter Damrosch first hinted that his days of active service were numbered, Manhattan has known the New York Symphony Society to be on the lookout for a new and permanent conductor. The German Otto Klemperer (Wiesbaden) was imported for two seasons, tried and found wanting. So was the German Fritz Busch (Dresden) who just completed a trial term of nearly three months. Not for some time, in fact, has anything akin to satisfaction prevailed at a New York Symphony concert until last week. Then Ossip Gabrilowitsch, borrowed from Detroit, brought it a sensitive, self-effacing performance of Haydn's C Major Symphony, Skryabin's Divine Poem, Debussy's Nuages & Fetes and Brahm's Academic Festival Overture. Manhattan, long appreciative of Pianist Gabrilowitsch, found Conductor Gabrilowitsch just as much to her liking, said so in her applause and in her press criticisms. Would Detroit spare him?