Ravel Race

The start was even. Conductor Serge Koussevitzky came out on Boston's Symphony Hall stage last week at precisely the same moment that Leopold Stokowski appeared on the Philadelphia Academy of Music stage. Koussevitzky's entrance was dignified, unflurried. Stokowski fairly flew from the wings. But then Stokowski had a longer first lap. He had the gloomy Fourth Symphony of Finnish Jan Sibelius to get through with, whereas Koussevitzky had only a trifling piece by Corsican Henri Martelli. Stokowski's pace was brisk but with odds so against him it was not surprising that Koussevitzky was ready first to start on the first U. S. performance of Maurice Ravel's new Piano Concerto.

Koussevitzky deserved to win. Composer Ravel had promised him the premiere to help celebrate the Boston Symphony's semicentennial (TIME, Oct. 13, 1930). Ravel claimed then that he was "aiming less at profundity than at setting in relief the pianist's virtuosity." Just the same he could not get his Concerto finished last year. It took him two years to write it, working ten and twelve hours a day. When it was done, his contract with Koussevitzky was already broken. Conductor Stokowski was also a potent leader with a penchant for doing "first times." What could be more diplomatic than to have both conductors present the Concerto simultaneously?

Stokowski's performance and Koussevitzky's were typical. Stokowski's was brilliant, electric. Koussevitzky's had more elegance, more finesse. Ravel's music was equally characteristic. There was a gay, light beginning in which the piano took the lead while the orchestra shimmered all around it, a slow movement lengthily developed and embroidered, a quick finale discreetly syncopated. All of it was the glittering, impersonal kind of music that people have come to associate with the Ravel so notedly fastidious about his neckties, his pastries, his home-grown hot-house flowers. Bostonians liked the soloing of Pianist Jesus Maria Sanroma. Philadelphians were just as pleased with Pianist Sylvan Levin. In both cities the urbane Ravel has become so popular that his Concerto was accepted unquestioningly as a big event of the season.

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