Music for the Millions

"Give the public the best," says Impresario Sol Hurok, "and you can't miss. If it's promoted right, projected right, the public is here."

Impresario Hurok, 64, should know. He has been in the business of promoting, projecting and presenting ballet, opera, drama, symphonic orchestras and concert artists all over the world for more than 40 years. This season, for example, he presented in the U.S. the Comedie-Franc,aise, the Sadlers Wells Ballet, the Santa Cecilia Choir of Rome, Antonio and his Spanish Ballet Company, the Scots Guards Band, the Kabuki Dancers, the Vienna Choir Boys. Last week, hewing to his principle of giving the public the best, he presented his second TV show of the season.* It was easily the best show of the week, an NBC Spectacular called Festival of Music (Producers' Showcase, Mon. 8 p.m.), which gathered in one program 13 of the world's topflight instrumental and operatic virtuosos.

Aim at the People. No matter what they performed, it would be hard to resist a show that included Pianist Artur Rubinstein, Violinist Isaac Stern, Cellist Gregor Piatigorsky, and such vocalists as Marian Anderson, Renata Tebaldi, Zinka Milanov, Rise Stevens, Blanche Thebom, Roberta Peters, Mildred Miller. Jan Peerce, Jussi Bjoerling, Leonard Warren. What they performed was aimed at the millions--arias from Pagliacci, The Tales of Hoffmann, Tosca, Carmen, a Chopin Polonaise, a movement from the Mendelssohn violin concerto. It was seen or heard by an estimated 23 million people.

Behind the scenes, the music was less harmonious than on screen. RCA Victor, co-sponsor of the show, thought it would be a good idea to load the program with RCA recording stars. As it worked out, RCA succeeded in adding two of its performing artists to Hurok's original list of ten. Hurok managed to keep Violinist Stern, who records for Columbia, and Soprano Tebaldi, who records for London, in the show. Hurok and RCA then faced an onslaught by the Metropolitan Opera's General Manager Rudolf Bing, who refused to allow Tebaldi to do a 15-minute version of Traviata for fear that it might take the edge off her performance of the opera at the Met next season. He also objected to Coloratura Peters singing anything too "strenuous" when two days later she was to sing her first Lucia at the Met. Bing got his way and made Festival pay for it by charging a royalty fee of $5.000 for use of Met singers.

Spread the Gospel. The squabbling, pressures, antagonisms became so violent that at times Hurok was heard to mutter that he had always been able to make a good living without TV, and if RCA and Bing didn't watch out, "that's what he would go back to."

But once the show was over and the pressure was off, Hurok changed his tune. He has ideas for other shows, e.g., digging out the popular light operas of Offenbach and Cimarosa. With NBC already planning another Hurok Spectacular, Hurok is talking of doing a show once a month or every two months "to spread the gospel of good music." The size of the Festival audience had the impresario talking fortissimo e molto appassionato: "The show went over with such a bang, it created such a revolution, that it proved to everybody that the American people are not morons. They can accept the greatest in music and in opera. NBC and Hurok will give it to them."

* His first: the Sadlers Wells Ballet doing Tchaikovsky's The Sleeping Beauty, seen by an estimated 37 million viewers.

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