Music: Voice like a Cello

Once a year the Friends of the Boston Symphony—some 1,000 Back Bay Brahmins who pay the Symphony's deficits—get a concert free. To make things intimate, Boston's vast Symphony Hall is curtained off halfway back. Last week, at the annual club concert, Conductor Serge Koussevitzky led the orchestra through a typical free-treat program—a bit of Mozart, a bit of Berlioz. Then he shooed the orchestra off stage, began a short speech in Russian-coated English: "Our Boston Symphony discovered Dorothy Maynor. Today we discover another great singer—Carol Brice. I hope very soon this artist will also be as great as Dorothy Maynor."

Then he...