Word: stokowskied
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When Conductor Leopold Stokowski made this statement five weeks ago, most people were inclined to discount it as Stokowski-talk. But last week Stokowski made good his word. He assembled 200 jobless musicians in Reyburn Plaza opposite Philadelphia's City Hall. A sharp wind was blowing across the open square. Some of the musicians sat huddled in overcoats. But Stokowski, by the time the concert was under way, had shed even his jacket, stood conducting in his shirtsleeves...
...Stokowski's outdoor concert was ostensibly a rehearsal for a John Philip Sousa memorial concert held next night in Convention Hall. With Assistant Conductor Alexander Smallens of the Philadelphia Orchestra and Bandmaster Arthur Pryor, who once played the trombone in Sousa's band, Stokowski led the 200 jobless through nine Sousa marches which have come to comprise the nation's street music...
...start was even. Conductor Serge Koussevitzky came out on Boston's Symphony Hall stage last week at precisely the same moment that Leopold Stokowski appeared on the Philadelphia Academy of Music stage. Koussevitzky's entrance was dignified, unflurried. Stokowski fairly flew from the wings. But then Stokowski had a longer first lap. He had the gloomy Fourth Symphony of Finnish Jan Sibelius to get through with, whereas Koussevitzky had only a trifling piece by Corsican Henri Martelli. Stokowski's pace was brisk but with odds so against him it was not surprising that Koussevitzky was ready first...
...than at setting in relief the pianist's virtuosity." Just the same he could not get his Concerto finished last year. It took him two years to write it, working ten and twelve hours a day. When it was done, his contract with Koussevitzky was already broken. Conductor Stokowski was also a potent leader with a penchant for doing "first times." What could be more diplomatic than to have both conductors present the Concerto simultaneously...
...Stokowski's performance and Koussevitzky's were typical. Stokowski's was brilliant, electric. Koussevitzky's had more elegance, more finesse. Ravel's music was equally characteristic. There was a gay, light beginning in which the piano took the lead while the orchestra shimmered all around it, a slow movement lengthily developed and embroidered, a quick finale discreetly syncopated. All of it was the glittering, impersonal kind of music that people have come to associate with the Ravel so notedly fastidious about his neckties, his pastries, his home-grown hot-house flowers. Bostonians liked the soloing...