Semaine Americaine

The Riviera had been rocked by U.S. jazz when Louis Armstrong and his cats took over at Nice's Jazz Festival a year ago (TIME, March 8, 1948). Last week, in Cannes' red plush little Casino theater, the gold plush Riviera set got to hear what longer-haired U.S. musicians were up to.

Casino audiences, with Denmark's Queen Alexandrine, Britain's Lord Mountbatten and France's Maurice Chevalier, among others, floating in & out, had first heard a week of French music, a week of Italian music, and an English week. For the semaine americaine, slim, nervous Conductor Jascha Horenstein was having his troubles.

Horns & Hats. None of the 40 musicians of the Cannes Municipal Orchestra had ever played a single note of modern American symphonic music; even though Conductor Horenstein found his players "quick-witted and adaptable," he still had to rehearse them three times a day, between 8 a.m. and 10 p.m. He had waited until the day before the concert for his score of Gershwin's Rhapsody in Blue to arrive, finally had to phone the U.S. embassy in Paris to borrow another and have it flown down. There were no mutes for the trumpets; he had to borrow felt hats to be used instead. The Casino's rosy-faced Artistic Director Georges Mockers, after being sent to find the automobile horns prescribed by Gershwin for his An American in Paris, couldn't help sighing: "Ah, ces Americains! What next?"

No one had to wait long to find out. First on the program was Juilliard President William Schuman's Symphony for Strings. Riviera critics, hearing it for the first time, found it "purely scientific music," but noted that "among a sea of dissonances there are hidden some real beauties." Then they were assaulted by Oklahoma-born Roy Harris' Third Symphony; its abrupt ending, with a savage blast from the whole orchestra, left the audience gaping (muttered the perspiring tympanisf. "For this kind of thing I should have six arms"). When the audience recovered, they gave Harris' Third long and generous applause. Not so the critics. Wrote one: "Maybe a bit discouraging to certain ears, but full of brilliant sonority. No doubt the symphony is a beautiful and interesting work of modern music."

Porgy & Bess. After hearing New Yorker Samuel Barber's Stravinskyesque Capricorn Concerto, American week finally got around to its triumph. Maurice Ravel had once told George Gershwin, "Don't you ever try to imitate the Europeans . . . It's better to write good Gershwin than bad Ravel." And after hearing some piano preludes, songs from Porgy and Bess and An American in Paris, topped off by a rousing Rhapsody in Blue, Cannes connoisseurs found good Gershwin good enough for them. They let Conductor Horenstein & Co. know it with six noisy curtain calls. Concluded old Cannes Critic Edouard Berthier: "When you write that kind of music, you don't have to imitate anybody."

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