Word: sundstrom
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While Chicago music lovers were squirming last winter under the worst Chicago operas they had ever heard. Conductor Ebba Sundstrom was swooping her Woman's Symphony Orchestra through its tenth, most gratifying season (TIME, Dec. 16, 1935). Long before her last concert it became clear that the Opera's loss was the Symphony's gain, that the woman's orchestra might look for more subscriptions, bigger patrons this autumn. Flushed with success, many patrons felt that a more dynamic, impressive conductor than Ebba Sundstrom should be billed. As a compromise, they packed her off to Europe...
...Chicago played three works competently before the intermission. Then last Sunday's Orchestra Hall audience craned their necks, watched a young man with horn-rimmed spectacles being led to a piano on the stage. The young man felt the keyboard, struck a note lightly, tentatively. Conductor Ebba Sundstrom tap-tapped with her baton. Into Rachmaninoff's Second Piano Concerto swung the orchestra, followed by the young man who, despite his unorthodox way of holding his hands flat, his arms stiff, played fleetly with sure, supple tone...
Beaming acknowledgment of the applause, 24-year-old Alec Templeton, blind Briton, performed one of the tricks which many in the audience had primarily come to witness. He asked Conductor Sundstrom to name five notes, which he swiftly contrived into a theme with variations in the manner of Bach, Mozart, Chopin...
...were hired to blow the difficult wind instruments at first but now all 80 players are women and for six years the conductor has been graceful, blonde Ebba Sundstrom, who is determined that the orchestra shall sound professional. Conductor Sundstrom has worked at music since she was a child on a farm in Lindsborg, Kans. At 7 she played the violin, at 13 she organized a trio, played in hotels and theatres. She was organist and choir director at Grace Lutheran Church, Minneapolis, when she met a young Swedish dentist as blonde as herself, became Mrs. Victor Nylander...
Tense black-haired Antonio Brico, conductor of the New York Women's Symphony, makes music sound like all work and no play. Conductor Sundstrom's touch is lighter but her discipline is strong. Her orchestra was considered capable enough to play at the opening of the Ford Gardens at the Century of Progress ir. 1934. It played last summer at the Grant Park concerts, proved more popular than the solid old Chicago Symphony. Conductor Sundstrom, practical about her job, says: "Women's orchestras must not merely play well; they must even strive to play better than other...