Birthday of a Conductor

(See front cover)

Conversation hushed in thousands of U. S. homes last Sunday afternoon. In New York's Carnegie Hall a great audience rose to its feet as a slender little man with a stick under his arm made his way as swiftly and inconspicuously as possible to the conductor's stand. For him the business of the afternoon was Beethoven's Sixth Symphony, the Franck D Minor. But for once he had to pause until the audience had shown its reverence for Arturo Toscanini.

The briefest of little bows, his left hand on his hip, his baton tapping smartly on the nearest violin stand and the audience was still, ready for another Toscanini miracle. For a second he closed his eyes. Then his baton cut sharply into the air. First passage was for the violins. The Maestro's stick seemed suddenly to become a violin bow playing tenderly across imaginary strings. His left hand molded phrases, shot up like a policeman's warning to keep the pianissimos. Most conductors make an elaborate show of signaling to the different players, whipping up climaxes. Toscanini had done all that at rehearsal. When he quivered his hand over his heart the men knew that he wanted the most from them. And always he sang, as he wanted the orchestra to sing. Toscanini's way to quench an ovation is to tug at the concertmaster's sleeve, an order for the musicians to leave the stage. But though the players filed out quickly last week the audience refused to leave until Toscanini came back, shyly accepted their cheers and bravos. It was his 67th birthday and he had let the day be advertised for the sake of the Philharmonic-Symphony's campaign for money. But at speechmaking he drew the line. "I talk with my baton," he told the campaigners. In intermission while he was changing his shirt, rubbing his face with cologne, one of the Philharmonic directors said his birthday message for him: "I am a conductor and outside of the province of my own work I am conscious of the lack of power to give expression to my feelings, either to a visible or a radio audience. . . . We recognize our great responsibility. For if I fail in bringing you accurately what has been written, or if this great orchestra fails by one note, we cannot make the perfect whole which he, the great composer, had designed. . . . If each of you today will send a tribute, small or great. . . ." Toscanini's birthday presents amounted to some $50,000, made over $400,000 that the Philharmonic has collected since Harry Harkness Flagler, president of the Society, announced that the Orchestra was in peril of its life (TIME, Feb. 5). The S O S (Save Our Symphony) Campaign was launched in Mr. Flagler's Park Avenue home. There he informed 70 likely givers that $500,000 would have to be raised to assure the Orchestra's existence for the next three seasons. Mr. Flagler's guests knew the Philharmonic's proud reputation, knew that it had never before begged publicly for money. A telegram from Clarence Hungerford Mackay expressed more than it said. He simply regretted that he could not be present but everyone knew that in his prosperous days he had quietly made up many a deficit, that he was too proud to go on acting as the Philharmonic's mouthpiece when he could no longer contribute to its support. President Flagler, who learned what an orchestra can cost when he supported the New York Symphony for his friend Walter Damrosch, went specifically into the Philharmonic's money troubles.* Every possible economy had been made, he said. And well he knows, for he delegates little responsibility, enjoys supervising the tiniest transaction. With box-office receipts off $60,000 this season, he said, the deficit would amount to something like $150,000. He and Marshall Field offered to underwrite the campaign, took over a suite in the Waldorf-Astoria, engaged a staff of professional money-raisers. Mrs. Vincent Astor organized a Women's Committee, opened her exclusive home for business meetings, goes each day to check on returns at campaign headquarters. Radio appeals have been made by New York's Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia, a longtime Philharmonic subscriber, by Mr. Flagler, Mrs. Astor, Mrs. Christian R. Holmes, Geraldine Farrar, Deems Taylor, Norman H. Davis. Mrs. Franklin D. Roosevelt, speaking from the White House five Sundays ago, said: "In helping to preserve the Philharmonic-Symphony Orchestra you will help preserve a sense of values, a spiritual outlook, a feeling for the good and the beautiful which in turn will help to preserve those other things in our country which we believe should be perpetuated.'' The Philharmonic's history has been a strong point of appeal. It is the oldest U. S. orchestra, second oldest in the world.* It has not missed a season since 1842 when it started as a cooperative organization giving concerts in the Apollo Rooms on Lower Broadway. The musicians stood up to play then. Several chosen for their "appearance and address" acted as ushers, wore white gloves until the Society discovered it could save $4.75 if they went barehanded. Never has a Philharmonic concert been canceled. Only two have been postponed, one when Conductor Anton Seidl died suddenly, the other when Abraham Lincoln was assassinated. Radio has made the Philharmonic the world's most widely heard orchestra. Columbia Broadcasting System figured that 9,000,000 listened to Toscanini's birthday concert, the 2,981st concert that the Philharmonic has given. For its artistic prestige, never higher than during the last decade, the little 67-year-old Italian is responsible. New Yorkers knew him before as an opera conductor but in 1915 he tiffed with Giulio Gatti-Casazza, raged out of the Metropolitan and returned to Milan to give all his time to the Scala. No one thought he would accept when Clarence Mackay asked him to conduct the Philharmonic in 1926. And when he cabled that he would come, great was the trepidation among the musicians. He was a musical god, they had heard, a despot, a devil. He used no score even at rehearsal but he could detect the tiniest flaws. Once in Milan he had smashed an offending violin and a splinter flew up, hit the player in one eye. Toscanini's fabulous memory gave him his first chance to conduct. He had studied to be a 'cellist at the Parma Conservatory. As a 'cellist he was playing in Rio de Janeiro when one night the regular conductor was unable to appear. In desperation the players remembered that Toscanini, then 19, seemed to know everything by heart. He had no dress coat. But the players hustled him into one, thrust a baton into his hand and boosted him on the conductor's stand. Without glancing at the score he gave such a flawless At da that he stayed on as conductor for the rest of the season. The players said then that he had memorized the scores because he was so nearsighted. It never occurred to them that a man might see with his ears and hear with his soul. His way was to absorb music. Back in Italy he went on proving his powers. At 27 he conducted Tristan und Isolde in Turin. His heart thumped for three months afterwards and he slept much less than his four hours a night. In 1898 he and Gatti were asked to reorganize the Scala. They did such a good job that the Metropolitan wanted them for New York. Gatti had a shrewd eye to the box-office but Toscanini was expensive. He demanded endless rehearsals, drilled over single phrases until the singers were ready to drop. Once Geraldine Farrar, his great and good friend, interrupted him: "Maestro, I am the star of this performance--not you." Toscanini answered, "Madam, there are no stars in my performances. There are only stars in Heaven." The Philharmonic players have become accustomed to Toscanini's "tempests," accept them as part of his genius. At rehearsals now they expect him to break batons. The first violinist keeps a ready supply. "Porco Dio!" he may shout. The players may be frightened but few are offended. They know that he is just as likely to drop on his knees before them, crying: "Come with me to heaven! Come on wings!" Then they will play better than they know. how. But Toscanini will accept none of their praise. "Gentlemen, it is not I. it is Beethoven. . . . And this passage here must float." He will spread out his handkerchief, let it drift to the floor. "And the pianissimo must sound far, far away. Far away in Brooklyn." At performances a wrong note or a muddled phrase is something more serious. He once smashed both fists through a beaverboard locker. The Carnegie Hall watchman has never had it repaired. "Look," he says proudly, "what the kingpin did!" When Ravel's Bolero was first given Toscanini summoned one of the musicians to his dressing room, raged for live minutes in sizzling Italian. When he realized the player understood none of it he was completely frustrated, threw up his hands and resorted to "You bad, bad man!" Because slackness or error in music seems so unforgivable to Toscanini few of his friendships are with musicians. He hates Manhattan's noise but he lives at the Hotel Astor because his friends the Muschenheims own it. He has become reconciled with Gatti. But most of the time he sticks closely to his plump, domestic wife, Signora Carla who cuts his hair, lays out his shirts, his cologne for intermission, the diamond studs Farrar once gave him. Signora Carla (she calls Toscanini "Tosca") takes care of the Belgian griffon Picciu, a present from Soprano Frances Alda. While the Maestro is rehearsing she often goes shopping, watches the stock market. The children are grown up. Son Walter collects rare manuscripts in Milan. Daughter Wally is now Countess Castelbarco. Wanda last December married Pianist Vladimir Horowitz. Signora Carla now makes the Maestro's moods her chief concern. She knows how particular he is about his clothes, his little bow ties, his finely pleated shirts, his patent leather shoes. She sees that he gets the juice of twelve lemons each day, never complains when he studies half the night, gets up at six in the morning and telephones his friends. She has even learned to look properly concerned each time he tells her that he has lost his glasses. She knows he hates to admit that he has broken them in a rage, hidden away the pieces.* Toscanini, who rarely has a dime in his pocket, is often criticized for accepting a $75,000 salary from the Philharmonic. But without the little Italian the Orchestra would be in a far more desperate plight. Not one capacity audience gathered this season to hear Bruno Walter or Hans Lange, the other two Philharmonic' conductors. Toscanini's 14 Beethoven concerts sold out to the doors. The Wagner performances planned for April 15, 22 and 29 should do as well. Toscanini's greatest admirers wish that he had Koussevitzky's skill at program-making, that he did not lavish so much of his genius on mediocre scores by his countrymen. But no criticism touches the Maestro so long as he feels that he is faithful to a composer's intention. Once he has made a decision nothing can budge him. He took a beating in Bologna three years ago rather than play the Fascist Hymn at what seemed to him an inappropriate occasion. No coaxing could get him to Bayreuth when Adolf Hitler discriminated against his fellow musicians who happened to be Jews (TIME. June 19). He took one of his stands last week when he refused to talk at his birthday party. Many a Sunday afternoon subscriber remembered that he had made a speech three years ago when Signora Carla was home in Milan with a broken leg. At great expense that day Columbia Broadcasting System had arranged a short wave connection lo Italy and at the end of the concert, to everyone's amazement, the Maestro rushed up to the microphone and in his croaking voice said: "I send you my best greetings. I will sail in two days and I will see you and embrace you." At the Sunday afternoon broadcasts Critic Lawrence Gilman (New York Herald Tribune) talks about the composers, describes the music. Last week he spoke only of Toscanini. Said he: "When one thinks back over the countless manifestations of Mr. Toscanini's art as a conductor that we in this country have been privileged to experience, one recalls none that did not leave in the mind a deepening conviction that he represents, with a peculiar completeness, the ideal of the great interpreter. . . . He has proved to us. by repeated demonstration, that the supreme artist must depend for his spiritual sustenance upon elements no less rare than simplicity and selflessness and faith. He has brought closer to us the greatness of exalted and imperishable things. ..."

* Between 1922 and 1928, when the Xew York Symphony merged with the Philharmonic, Mr. Flakier spent $1.048,152 on the Damrosch Or- chestra. (His father made the Flakier fortune on Standard Oil. Florida railroads.) The Philharmonic's operating expenses will amount to $686,000 this season. Salaries for 108 musicians and three conductors amount to $438,861. Receipts are estimated at $545.826. Neither Mr. Mackay nor Mr. Flagler felt able to help finance the orchestra this season. Bank loans made it possible. The Leipzig Gcivamlhaits Orchestra is older. *When Toscanini sailed last spring for Europe a little pile of broken spectacles was found in the back of his closet.

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