A letter from the Publisher

IN his sprawling garden suite at Boston's Ritz-Carlton Hotel one evening last week, Composer Fritz Loewe rippled at the piano while a companion paced and hummed. This was not Lerner and Loewe at work, but Loewe enjoying himself and TIME Senior Editor Henry Grunwald mixing work with some nostalgia. The Loewe-Grunwald repertoire: songs from Countess-Maritza and The Smiling Husband by the late Austrian Librettist, Alfred Grunwald, whom Composer Loewe knew back in Vienna more than 30 years ago, and who was Editor Grunwald's father. To his astonishment, Grunwald found that Loewe remembered more...