Maestro & Prodigy

When a thin, high-strung little man mounted the conductor's stand in Manhattan's Carnegie Hall one evening last week, the big audience applauded cordially. Igor Stravinsky peered at them through his double-lensed glasses, curved his heavy lips in greeting. Though he was standing there for the first time in twelve years, few in the audience were unfamiliar with the man who, more than any other, had bent modern music to his will.

Igor Stravinsky became an overnight celebrity in Russia when he wrote Fireworks as a wedding present for Rimsky-Korsakov's daughter. Diaghilev commissioned him in 1910 to compose for the Russian Ballet. In the next few years Stravinsky's name sped across Europe as the author of the blazing, polyphonic Firebird and the riotous Petrouchka. The harsh, neolithic percussions of Stravinsky's Sacre du Printemps were less welcome, made first-nighters in Paris hiss and jeer. Stravinsky unconcernedly went his way. Suddenly he announced he was through with picture-music and would "return to Bach." His style grew clearer, if more austere, showed in every bar an uncanny knowledge of each instrument's value. Emotional people, who like music to conjure pictures for them, protested that he was incomprehensible. Stravinsky replied that he was "objective."

Last week's audience, flocking to hear what the Russian would do with their Philharmonic, found him as objective a conductor as he is composer. Leading off with a little-known Weber overture, he made its Chinese theme sound clear and precise. Stravinsky has always sneered at "interpretation." His complete lack of it froze many a listener's heart. He conducted with the sharp, exact beat of a metronome, like that instrument seemed indifferent to the gallery.

Those who did not know of Stravinsky's devotion to Mozart were surprised when he offered a Mozart concerto next. They were more surprised when a young U. S. pianist, performing on four days' notice, sat down and played the Mozart with skill and understanding, went on to play the hard piano part of Stravinsky's Capriccio without a flaw.

Scheduled for Stravinsky's second week, Beveridge Webster had been asked to play the first night when Samuel Dushkin took sick and had to give up the violin concerto originally announced. Young Webster made his emergency performance so technically telling that few could remember it was done in a pinch. For Pianist Webster, this performance with the Philharmonic was more historic than it was for Stravinsky. For him at 28, it capped a career already prodigious.

Beveridge Webster was born in Pittsburgh where his father was director of the Pittsburgh Conservatory of Music and taught music analysis for many years. When Beveridge reached five, his father began to teach him piano. At eight, young Beveridge astonished a private audience from the Conservatory by playing, with his mother, a Beethoven sonata for four hands.

When Webster was 13, his father left the Conservatory to take the whole family abroad. The boy was placed under the famous Pianist-Teacher Isidor Philipp, first at the American Academy at Fontainebleau, three years later at Paris Conservatory of Music. At 18, he won first prize in the Conservatory's piano competition, is still the only U. S. pianist who can boast that honor.

In 1926 young Webster left the Conservatory to go on tour. Since then he has studied under Schnabel in Berlin, played triumphantly through France, England, Holland. Germany, Italy, Russia. Manhattanites first heard him two years ago when he made his debut with the Philharmonic under Werner Janssen. He has played also with the Philadelphia Orchestra, the Boston, St. Louis, Pittsburgh and Richmond symphonies. Last month he played in the White House after the Cabinet dinner.

Dark, well-knit, young Beveridge Webster is a good swimmer, takes pride in his tennis, likes to play poker or bridge with his great good friend Igor Stravinsky. He boasts of the little slam he once made against Sidney Lenz.

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