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Change of Life. Not all the 100 men got to like their new master. But some did. When Halina came home from the hospital with a baby two years ago, a delegation from the Philharmonic serenaded her with Wagner's Siegfried Idyll* and reduced the Rodzinskis to tears. Some of the boys, trying to oblige the boss, for a while drank goat's milk that Rodzinski sent in from his farm at Stockbridge, Mass.
The New York musicians found him less of a ring-tailed Tartar than he had been in Cleveland. In the meantime, he had found Buchmanism. He went to see a doctor in Boston about a sore back, and was told that his trouble was spiritual. He never joined in the public confessions of his fellow evangels in Moral Re-Armament, but liked the way the Buch-manites had become "such happy people."
Shake on It. Last week happy Artur Rodzinski was a man without a contract. In New York the Philharmonic scurried around for a successor to him (a possible candidate: Minneapolis' dramatic Dimitri Mitropoulos). In Chicago, all Rodzinski had was a "handshake agreement." A handshake, however, was all that Chicago's late, beloved Dr. Frederick Stock needed for 38 years. And (until now) it had been enough for the outgoing conductor, earnest, uninspired Desire Defauw.
"Since 21 years," Rodzinski exulted last week, "Chicago is my goal. It is a healthy city, like a young colt, full of concentrated power. . . . New York will go down."
* Judson's firm and its big rival, National Concerts and Artists Corp. (which handles few conductors), do about 90% of the concert bookings for all U.S. singers, dancers and instrumentalists. Impresario Sol Hurok, better known because he is not so self-effacing as Judson, shares an office with N.C.A.C., works through it. * Which Wagner wrote as a surprise for wife Cosima on her 33rd birthday (Christmas Day, 1870). Wagner hired a group of musicians, led them as they played on the stairs for his bride of four months, their children (including 1½-year-old Siegfried, for whom it was named) and Nietzsche, their house guest.