Stadium Men

Out of New York City's Lewisohn Stadium last week went hollow-eyed Willem Van Hoogstraten, having conducted the New York Philharmonic Orchestra there for three weeks. After a program of Beethoven, Tchaikovsky, Bach and Brahms (apparently his favorite composer), he was given tokens of esteem in recognition of his ten-year association with the Stadium concerts, set out for Philadelphia to direct the Philadelphia Orchestra concerts in Robin Hood Dell Park. Next he will go to Europe, return in the autumn to conduct his seventh season in Portland, Ore.

Almost from pier to podium popped busy, plump little Conductor Fritz Reiner. He had just stepped off the boat from Italy the day before his first Stadium concert. Gustily he spoke of his summer doings. He had conducted in Milan, Naples, had tried to reduce at Marienbad, had peered about Venice for antiques and lace. With five cameras (two cinema) he and his wife had photographed each other climbing up the Jungfrau, standing in front of Dr. Axel Munthe's San Michele on Capri.

Usually classified as a modernist, Conductor Reiner gave in his first Stadium concert a program mostly classical. However, he told interviewers of an interest in such modern Americans as John Alden Carpenter, Aaron Copland, Roger H. Sessions and George Gershwin, who, he says, is "the only U. S. composer to have a popular following in Europe." And in his fourth concert, Conductor Reiner--who once studied for the Hungarian bar--gave a program composed of the works of four living musicians (Stravinsky, Kodaly, Ravel, Henry Hadley), two dead within the century (Debussy, Goldmark).

After two weeks at the Stadium, he will go to Philadelphia where he, too, will conduct a week at Robin Hood Dell.

When Reiner leaves the Stadium, in will go Conductor Albert Coates, fresh from his Italian villa on Lake Maggiore. He spent the winter with the Moscow Grand Opera, made gramophone records in England this spring, brings to the U. S. a new Russian work--a suite from music to the comedy The Flea. It will be played at the Stadium along with his own suite from music to The Taming of the Shrew, intended for Max Reinhardt's forthcoming Berlin production.

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