Fair Music

A World's Fair without music would be a disgrace to so musically proud a city as Chicago. But with Samuel Insull's Civic Opera collapsed, Louis Eckstein unable to get enough others to help him carry on opera at woodsy Ravinia, and the Chicago Symphony in trouble with the Musicians' Union, that was what threatened. The Chicago Friends of Music organized ambitiously last winter to raise $100,000 for an outdoor Temple of Music to be built near the Fair grounds (TIME, Dec. 26). Some $25,000 was raised. The Temple idea was abandoned and the $25,000 set aside for concerts to be given in the Auditorium on Wabash Ave. Last week the Chicago Friends manfully started their World's Fair concert season. Soprano Claire Dux, wife of Packer Charles Henry Swift, soloed without pay the opening night, brought the house cheering to its feet. Pianist Rudolph Ganz played next night. Ruth Page and a special corps de ballet danced to Ravel's Bolero night after that. Scheduled for this week is an all-Gershwin concert at which Gershwin will play the piano while his friend William Daly conducts; also a Negro night when the premiere of a symphony by Florence B. Trice will be played and the soloists will be Tenor Roland Hayes and stocky 19-year-old Pianist Margaret Bonds. When General Italo Balbo and his 24 aviators arrive from Italy they will be given a special performance of Aida. Hero of the World's Fair concerts is grey-haired Conductor Frederick August Stock who is giving his services. The opening night was sweltering hot but Conductor Stock seemed unmindful of the perspiration streaming down his face. He was back in the Auditorium where he used to play the viola under Theodore Thomas, his predecessor who supervised the Fair music in 1893. He conducted Wagner and Richard Strauss music with such force and inspiration that even his most finicky listeners wondered how they ever could have thought him stodgy.

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