"One of the People"

The first day he landed at the Dallas airport from New York last September, shock-haired, strapping (6 ft. 2 in., 185 lbs.) Walter Hendl slapped on a cowboy Stetson and accepted appointment as an honorary deputy sheriff. In the next few days he lunched with Fan Dancer Sally Rand at the Junior Chamber of Commerce, judged a beauty contest, went to a Neiman-Marcus fashion show, played jazz piano for the girls at a local prep school and lunched with the Rotarians. For jovial New Jersey-born Hendl, it was all part of his new job as conductor of the Dallas Symphony Orchestra.

At 32, Walter Hendl is the youngest permanent conductor of a major U.S. symphony orchestra. Since September, he has also been one of the busiest. Last month, in addition to rehearsing long hours with his new orchestra, he composed a Concerto for Toys and Orchestra, then flew to New York and recorded it. On the side, he found time to inaugurate a competition in composition and another in instrument playing for pupils in the Dallas public schools. And one night, with visiting Conductor Sir Thomas Beecham on the podium, he sat down at the piano and gave a workmanlike performance of Brahms's Piano Concerto No. 1. Dallas music lovers, whom Hendl has diplomatically described as "extremely perceptive," were delighted.

Concertos & Jive. The Dallas Symphony Orchestra is small (82 players), local (half of the musicians come from east Texas), young (average age: 30) and very enthusiastic over its new conductor. Though there is an impressive "Founded in 1901" at the top of its programs, the present orchestra is really only five years old: in 1945, after a wartime hiatus, Hungarian-born Antal Dorati (now conductor of the Minneapolis Symphony) reorganized it and made it for the first time a competent, nationally respected organization. Hendl has continued Dorati's tradition of introducing new works. With Rudolf Firkusny at the piano last month, he conducted the orchestra in the world premiere of Bohuslav Martinu's Piano Concerto No. j. This week, in an all-Strauss program, he presented the U.S. premiere of one of the late composer's last works, his Concertino for Clarinet, Bassoon, Harp and Strings.

Walter Hendl first started waving his hands in front of an orchestra in 1939, when he won a Curtis Institute conducting fellowship with Fritz Reiner. In 1944 he was discharged from two years of Army service, during which he had led a dance band, the Jive Bombers. In the next year he wrote the music for a successful Broadway show, Dark of the Moon, and went to work as assistant conductor of the New York Philharmonic-Symphony. Impressed by his work in New York, the trustees of the Dallas orchestra offered him their conductorship.

White Tie & Overalls. In Texas one of Hendl's most spectacular achievements was his engineering of a musical rapprochement between Dallas and its bitter rival, Fort Worth, 35 miles away. One afternoon last month Hendl, in overalls and a farmer's straw hat, conducted a successful children's concert in Fort Worth. That evening, in white tie, he gave their elders a solid program of Bach, Mozart and Stravinsky. Forthwith, Fort Worth Flour Miller Edwin Bewley Jr. persuaded a group of his fellow citizens to form a Fort Worth Symphony Society. Its purpose: to promote further concerts in Fort Worth by the Dallas Symphony Orchestra.

Hendl believes both that "Bach should be heard more," and that "Jazz and show music contain examples which . . . can only be called good music . . . and will find a permanent place in our musical culture." Hendl plans to serve his listeners a menu made up 65% of old masters, 35% of new music or music new to Dallas.

For himself, Conductor Hendl hopes to be able to do a bit more entertaining in his rambling white house in fashionable Preston Hollow, which he shares with his onetime actress wife "Newby" and daughter Susan, 2, and possibly get in a bit of tennis and flying. "It is highly desirable," he says, "that a conductor be recognized as one of the people. I don't plan to lead an ivory-tower existence."

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