For the opening of its orchestra season, Philadelphia had its own, its very own Leopold Stokowski. Slender and elegant as ever, he was bursting with energy. He had spent a quiet summer studying Persian music in the British Museum. But like any shrewd showman he first gave his subscribers just what they wanted: his own arrangement of Bach, a Beethoven symphony, a magnificent high-powered reading of Death and Transfiguration. Only flaw was the Prelude to Hans Pfitzner's long-winded Palestrina. But of that no one took much notice.
Stokowski schemes crop thick as clover. Last...