Word: conductor
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Copland: A Lincoln Portrait (Boston Symphony Orchestra, Serge Koussevitzky conducting, with Melvyn Douglas narrating; Victor, 3 sides). Koussevitzky speeds up Copland's rhythms and Melvyn Douglas reads his lines like a carnival barker. Not so effective as Conductor Artur Rodzinski's 1946 version with the Philharmonic-Symphony Orchestra of New York, which has Negro Baritone Kenneth Spencer's dignified narration. Performance: fair...
...some good shows. Aside from alert news and sports coverage, big, sprawling Mutual has only six or seven programs worth the time of day or night. Ed knows his weakness: "Programs will be our No. 1 objective this year." He means "programs with that commercial aroma." Ed once directed Conductor George Szell of the Cleveland Symphony Orchestra not to play over Mutual "for art's sake-play simple, melodic things for the millions...
...Conductor Munch, a well-set-up 55, is an Alsatian who learned conducting from Wilhelm Furtwangler in Leipzig. In 1938 he became conductor of the Paris Conservatoire Orchestra, Paris' oldest symphony orchestra, soon had a following of hundreds of French women who bought season tickets for concerts of "le beau Charles," without even caring what he was to play. The Conservatoire directors cared, though. They admitted that he got brilliant tone quality out of his musicians, but they did not share his enthusiasm for contemporary music. Three months ago the directors ordered him to conduct more familiar symphonies. Munch...
...guest appearances in his first visit to the U.S., Munch was allowed to pick his own programs. In Boston, where he made a big hit, Beacon Hill rustled with rumors that he would succeed 72-year-old Serge Koussevitzky as the Boston's permanent conductor...
...overdid them), but cheered the first U.S. performance of French Dissonantist Arthur Honegger's Third (Liturgique) Symphony. It clanked through a violent first movement, settled into a lyric, prayer-like second movement and after an explosive climax in the third concluded with a wispy, ethereal melody. Said Conductor Munch: "It is horizontal music, rather stern and unsentimental, and as such, an expression of our times...