New Northern Star

For the climax of his winter conducting season, Arturo Toscanini picked Beethoven's soaring Missa Solemnis. Following his baton in Carnegie Hall last week were Basso Jerome Hines, Tenor Eugene Conley, and Mezzo-Soprano Nan Merriman as soloists, the members of the NBC Symphony and the Robert Shaw Chorale. Amidst this phalanx of well-known U.S. artists was one soloist few Americans had ever so much as heard of: a 28-year-old Toronto soprano named Lois Marshall. From now on, listeners are going to hear a lot more of her.

In a performance that even Toscanini has rarely equaled for fire and devotion, there was no single standout. But Marshall's soprano, as the highest solo voice, could be heard floating magnificently above even the massed ensemble. In the more subdued sections of Beethoven's Mass, her tone was pure and wellrounded, her florid passages had a liquid sound and her phrasing a natural warmth that her colleagues, for all their greater experience, never quite matched.

Lois Marshall's triumph came with a rush, at the end of a long, uphill pull. When she was 2 1/2, she came down with polio, and the disease left her with a painful limp. Moreover, in her determination to succeed as a singer, she developed as a youngster such a grimly serious manner that her voice teacher, Toronto's Weldon Kilburn, feared she would never charm an audience. But when she gave her first recital at 15, she dropped her determined air and radiated.

The young soprano was earning her living as a singer in Canada when she won a Naumburg Award to cover the cost of a Manhattan debut last year. In December, she gave a Town Hall recital that won her enthusiastic reviews. That did it. She was signed up for a U.S. tour for next season and got a tryout with Toscanini. He was murmuring "Brava" before she had gone very far, "Bravissima!" at the end.

For Lois Marshall, standing out front of an orchestra and chorus and singing for Toscanini last week was a dream come true. "That sound behind you just lifts you up and carries you on."

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