Word: conductor
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...York Philharmonic under Guest Conductor Thomas Schippers presented Samuel Barber's rarely performed Knoxville: Summer of 1915, set to the prose poem by James Agee, novelist and film critic who died in 1955. Conductor Schippers provided a well-balanced performance, nicely graduated to Soprano Leontyne Price's clear and controlled reading of the text. If the piece itself had a weakness, it was the tendency to overly luxuriant melody, at odds with the simplicity and the subtle rhythm of the language. Example: the line "he has coiled the hose'' had Soprano Price soaring dramatically over...
Said the startled cellist to the conductor: "Are those your metronome marks in the score?" Replied the conductor adamantly: "Yes." And at that point, reports the Boston Symphony's First Cellist Sammy Mayes, Russia's Dmitry Kabalevsky simply "took off." Composer Kabalevsky was conducting his own cello concerto in Boston, and "he wanted it a lot faster than we usually play it. You start flying around like a young gazelle...
...visit was the obvious affection the visitors had for the Boston Symphony, the first U.S. orchestra to tour Russia (in 1956), and for its Russian-born or Russian-speaking musicians. During rehearsals, the Russians filed into the side balcony of Symphony Hall, leaned intently over the railing, and watched Conductor Charles Munch. Kabalevsky and Composer Aaron Copland (who rehearsed his own suite from The Tender Land) alternate on the podium...
Kabalevsky's somberly flowing Concerto for Cello and Orchestra proved such a hit that the composer-conductor finally signaled to Soloist Mayes. repeated the second movement, a rare procedure in staid old Symphony Hall. Khrennikov's First Symphony proved to be a broadly melodic crowd-rouser, and Amirov's Kyurdi-Ovshari Mugami was so heavily coated with schmalzy melody that one listener cracked: "The triumph of the proletariat on Bald Mountain." Nevertheless, the audience shouted its approval, while the Russians, standing on the stage, applauded the spectators in return. "For Symphony Hall," said the radio announcer...
...shack in the railroad yards at Antigo, Wis. last week sat four railroadmen: a fireman, a conductor, a brakeman and a flagman. All together, they collect pay totaling $110 a day, not counting fringe benefits. Their job: doing nothing. Earlier this year, the Chicago & North Western Railroad decided to eliminate one of the two switching locomotives at Antigo because there was not enough work to keep them busy. But the road may not remove the idled crew without union permission, and permission had not been given...