New Chords in Caracas

At 9:15 the audience in the crowded old Caracas Municipal Theater began to clap and whistle. At 9:45 the red curtain finally went up. Tall, mustachioed old Maestro Vicente Emilio Sojo bowed from the podium, turned and led his 76 musicians in Hail the Brave People, Venezuela's national anthem. The first concert of the revitalized Orquesta Sinfonica de Venezuela (founded 1930) was off to a trumpeting start.

It was a great night for the old conductor, who had almost singlehanded built a crew of amateur parlor-fiddlers into a professional orchestra. Forty years earlier he had gone to work as a Caracas cigarmaker because "there wasn't enough music to make a living at it." Later, as a self-taught harmony teacher, then as director of Caracas' School of Music, he plugged for a place for the arts in the national life. The revolution of 1945 gave him his big break. Elected to the Constituent Assembly as a supporter of President Romulo Betancourt's Accion Democratica, he sold the Government on the idea that a good symphony orchestra would be good for the country.

This year, with a $300,000 Government subsidy, he imported 26 musicians from Italy, France, Belgium. He raised salaries. He laid down a program of five two-hour rehearsals a week. Last week's concert, first of a series at popular prices (60-c--$1.80), showed what could be done. Never had the works of Beethoven, Massenet and Moussorgsky sounded so sonorously in Caracas. At intermission, flanked by members of his revolutionary Junta, President Betancourt hustled backstage to congratulate the maestro. Cried Betancourt: "Magnifico!"

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