The British Carry On

The Germans claimed they buzz-bombed Manchester last week (see FOREIGN NEWS), but they didn't hit John Barbirolli. Conductor Barbirolli and Manchester's famed Halle Orchestra had pulled a surprise maneuver. Despite military hell and the English Channel's high water, they were touring Belgium right under Hitler's nose. Britain's ENSA (roughly the British equivalent of the U.S.O.) considered the tour quite a triumph. It was the first time a British symphony orchestra had visited liberated Europe, and it was also probably the most strenuous trip in the peaceable annals of symphonic music.

The orchestra arrived at the Channel to find a hurricane raging. They set out just the same. Fogbound in mid-channel, they missed their first Brussels date, spent the night giving an improvised shipboard concert for an audience of Tommies.

They finally got to Brussels and put on a concert at the famed Palais des Beaux-Arts--whereupon Oboist Evelyn Rothwell (in private life Mrs. John Barbirolli) fell off the Beaux-Arts' modernistic stage and injured her arm so badly she couldn't play. Undaunted, Conductor Barbirolli led his forces into the teeth of the German advance, twice a day played items like Wagner's Rienzi Overture and Mozart's Eine Kleine Nachtmusik for cheering servicemen at Eindhoven and Ghent, and squeezed in a few extra concerts for Belgian civilians. At week's end the intrepid Manchesterites were still at it.

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