New Symphonies

Great symphonies, like great novels, are usually written by men of mature years. Notable exceptions are the 39 symphonies of Mozart, who wrote his first when he was eight, and died at an age (34) when the average composer is just beginning to hit his stride. But the big symphonies of the German romantic period usually came comparatively late in their composers' lives. Great epic Symphonist Beethoven, who wrote nine, waited until 30 to write his first one; Symphonist Brahms waited until he was 43; Symphonist Bruckner until he was 42.

Perky young U. S. composers often try to cut their teeth on symphonies, try writing musical epics before they have learned how to spell cat, musically speaking. An exception is Boston's softspoken, dark-eyed Walter Piston, who last week conducted the premiere of his First Symphony with the Boston Symphony Orchestra. Like Composers Brahms and Bruckner, Composer Piston had bided his time until he was well into his forties.

Programmed by canny Conductor Koussevitzky between the First Symphony of Beethoven and the First Symphony of Sibelius, Composer Piston's magnum opus drew as many bravos as if it were the real meat in the sandwich. Though part of this enthusiasm may have come from a desire to see local Harvard Professor Piston make good, solemn critics were agreed that his symphony was one of the most individual and stirring works of its kind by a U. S. composer. Praised were its skillful instrumentation and the rugged climax of its final movement. Noted also was an emotional juiciness hitherto lacking in Composer Piston's music.

In the past, 44-year-old Composer Piston's dry, academic, cacophonous works have drawn hosannas from modernist theoreticians rather than from music-hungry audiences. But even conservatives have admitted that he seemed to know what he was doing, and seemed to be doing it with relentless determination.

Determination played a big part in landing quiet-voiced Professor Piston where he is today. At 26, a married man with very little in the way of a formal education, he managed to get enrolled at Harvard, worked his way through, graduated summa cum laude with a Phi Beta Kappa key on his watch chain. A winner of the John Knowles Paine Fellowship, he was sent to Paris for two years to study with famed Pedagogue Nadia Boulanger (TIME, Feb. 28).

The day after Composer Piston's symphony had its premiere, a much more widely heralded piece of music was broadcast by the NBC Symphony under Conductor Artur Rodzinski: Russian Composer Dmitri Shostakovich's Fifth Symphony. Composer of the famed opera Lady Macbeth of Mzensk and onetime white-haired boy of Soviet music, Shostakovich had lain for two years in official outer darkness, his opera banned and his Fourth Symphony confiscated because of "Leftist" modernistic tendencies (TIME, April 4). First of his works to be O. K.'d by Moscow critics since his downfall, the Fifth Symphony was supposed to indicate the new Soviet trend toward babbling-brook romanticism.

Radio listeners, as well as the 1,300 who filled NBC's Studio 8H, found that Composer Shostakovich had backtracked with a vengeance. His Fifth Symphony avoided the boisterous clatter that had marred his earlier "May Day" Symphony (No. 3). returned to the vitality and sincerity of the First Symphony which made him famous ten years ago. Dominant influences observable in it were not those of post-War modernists but of such romantic symphonists as the late Gustav Mahler.

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