Birthday

In San Francisco, a small boy had a birthday, made his party out of such stuff as Mozart, Bach and Tartini and entertained 10.000 guests. He was Yehudi Menuhin, who after two years abroad, has upset the tradition that a child prodigy can never be a great artist. Out he came on to the great Civic Auditorium stage, a chunky child in the white socks, silk blouse and velvet breeches of the conventional boy violinist. Over his face spread a wide, confiding smile. Up to his chin went the violin -- itself not quite man-sized -- and the concert began.

In San Francisco, Yehudi Menuhin is at home. He was born there eleven years ago, the first son of Moshe Menuhin, a Russian, and his Tartar wife. There was no money at home to pay for a nursegirl and there were symphony concerts outside to be had for the going, so Yehudi, when he was not quite a year old, was taken along. The Menuhins scarcely ever missed a concert from then on until Conductor Alfred Hertz and all his musicians came to know them, and call the baby their mascot. Yehudi's first interest was in Concert- master Louis Persinger. He wanted to touch him, to finger the strings of his violin. When Yehudi was four years and ten months old, Persinger became his teacher. In five years he helped him to an almost uncanny understanding of his instrument. He did more when he did nothing to make the boy aware of himself or his talent, and the Russian father and the Tartar mother have been just as wise. Yehudi lives on a regular schedule with his sisters Hephzibah who is seven and Yaltah who is five. He gets up at seven, exercises, has breakfast, practices for three hours, has lunch, plays outdoors all the afternoon, has dinner and goes to bed at seven. Ask him what he likes best and his answer will be Bach and Beethoven and Handel and Haydn and Mozart and San Francisco and ice-cream sodas (the first thing he asked for after his Manhattan concert), handball, climbing rocks, chess, the new Cadillacs, St. Bernard dogs and giving concerts. Some weeks ago Walter Damrosch cautioned him gravely against playing the Beethoven Concerto with the New York Symphony and Yehudi said "Why not? I only want to have some fun playing with the orchestra." He had his fun and critics, niggardly always with their praise for youthful virtuosos, threw restraint to the winds, reveled in such simple qualities as innocence and joy, prayed these might not be tarnished. There followed an offer for seven concerts at $5,000 apiece, another from a San Francisco group for ten at $3,000 each but the Menuhins refused them both, boarded the train instead for San Francisco, permitted a birthday concert there and then announced a period of retirement "for the development of his musical and general education."

Ether Music

Woodpeckers play tunes on tin roofs. Could men play symphonies on moon- beams?

Whether the practical ratio between an instrument's sensitivity and the performer's virtuosity had now been exceeded, was argued last week by Manhattanites who heard--and saw--a concert, unprecedented in the U. S., by Prof. Leon Sergeievitch Theremin, tense young scientist-musician from Russia. His strange instrument looked like a radio set, which it was, with a difference. The only physical contact he had with it while playing was by invisible, intangible, infinitesimal waves of ether. His "keys," "strings," "pedals" were simply two radio antennae around which a storage battery set up delicate magnetic fields. The passage of his hands, moving airily near the antennae, so altered a current actuating a tonal diaphram and loudspeaker, that any pitch audible to the human ear could be produced. The timbre, controllable by dials, plugs and switches comparable to the stops of an organ, could be varied to approximate the drone of a bull fiddle, the silken flow of a violin, an organ's thunder. Some of the audience even thought they recognized the indescribable pulse of the human voice as Prof. Theremin picked his way through an apologetically simple program of familiar melodies.

For "primitive models," which was all they claimed to be, the first "theremo-phones" were marvels of scientific adroitness and musical potentiality. They offered to music an infinity of gradations in the entire scale of sound audible to hu- mans. The problem was, and remained in most minds: How to train the human hand to such precision that it could pick correct notes unerringly from midair, where inaccuracy of a fingernail's breadth, or even taking a deep breath at the wrong instant, would register a tonal error?

Prof. Teremin, proudly modest "Edison of Russia," did not attempt to guess what others might do with his invention. At home, associates were attempting to use it to translate the actual motions of a ballet into music. For the present, his own purpose was to test the popularity, and cash value, of "ether music" by taking it on tour through the U. S. Critics lauded, critics carped, none ignored.

First Big Bow

With all its trappings for Carmen, the Metropolitan Opera Company set out one afternoon last week for its bi-weekly performance in Philadelphia. Maria Jeritza went to show Philadelphians for the first time her turbulent, extratraditional Car- men. Giovanni Martinelli went to be her Don Jose, Mario Basiola to swagger his way through the Toreador's role, Queena Mario to be the ingenue Micaela. But Conductor Louis Hasselmans had to stay at home with lumbago pains.

In his place went Wilfred Pelletier, young French Canadian who for several years has done inestimable service behind the scenes at the Metropolitan and worn shyly the title of assistant conductor. In the summer season at Ravinia Park, to be sure, he has been a full-fledged conductor, but in Manhattan he has never had an opportunity to prove what he could do. Perhaps that was why, at Philadelphia, he scooted half apologetically through the fiddlers to the conductor's stand, bowed a stiff little bow and led off with a careful, restrained overture. But once the curtain went up, Carmen swept along at a vigor- ous pace. There were no tedious interludes between tunes, and for the first time this season the color in Bizet's score was made to match the color on the stage. To Jeritza, for her glamorous, dominating personality, to Martinelli for his loud, lush arias went the acclaim. They, how ever, sensitive to the merits of Pelletier's performance, brought him out on to the stage, left him there alone to take his first bow as conductor of a Metropolitan opera.

Ave

A second violinist yawned and hoped that no one had seen him--but the lot of a second violinist is a hard one, with rehearsal after rehearsal to fiddle through and three or four performances a week, --just so many notes and so many measures, all subordinated to the regular beat of the man who should happen to be in command. . . .

Down in the third row of the orchestra a stiff-shirted patron looked at his program and patted a perfunctory hand over gaping jaws . . . the 2,256th concert of the Philharmonic Orchestra . . . the overture to Sinigaglia's Le Baruffe Chiozzotte, Brahms' Second Symphony, Honegger's Pastorale d'Ete and Pacific 231, Elgar's Enigma Variations. ... To be sure, he had heard much of the Italian Arturo Toscanini who was scheduled to conduct, heard that he could make big music out of indifferent material, but out of Honeg- ger, Sinigaglia and the Elgar Variations? The lady beside him dropped her bag: he stooped to pick it up, sat up in time to see a great Manhattan audience getting to its feet, beating its palms together, cheering. He saw a grizzled, little man bowing from the stage, hurriedly, as if he wished all the demonstration over before it had scarcely begun. He saw him tap attention, wheel around. He heard the Sinigaglia fairly bubble with exhilaration, the Honegger noise expand into something almost heroic, the Elgar Variations spread surely and subtly into a thousand glowing colors, the Brahms become something magnificently new--the creation of Toscanini himself and of his assistants who played as they have not played since he was with them last season. . . .

When the concert was done, Manhattan critics hurled themselves into taxis, sped to their offices, sat there over their typewriters fumbling for words. Lawrence Oilman (The Herald-Tribune) finally wrote: "The greatest conductor in the world has returned to us." Samuel Chotzinoff (The World): "The center of the musical world shifted from Milan* to New York. . . . Perhaps it were better for Mr. Toscanini to make one or two appearances and depart; for if we are to hear him every week the musical scribes will be forced to shut up shop for lack of flaming adjectives."

*Where Toscanini is director of La Scala Opera House.