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Music: Visitor with a Purpose

2 minute read
TIME

Dark, sprightly Dr. Malcolm Sargent, 49, is a man with a mission. Besides directing the Liverpool Philharmonic and conducting the London Philharmonic, he likes to bring serious British music to musically unsophisticated peoples. Last week he came to the U.S.

Dr. Sargent will guest-conduct the NBC Symphony Orchestra for four Sunday concerts. His purpose: to introduce contemporary British music to Americans, just as he has introduced it to Australians, New Zealanders, Swedes, Palestinian Jews and British war workers. Pleased to find U.S. familiarity with the works of Sir Edward Elgar (Pomp and Circumstance), he hopes to whet a U.S. appetite for Vaughan Williams, Gustav Hoist, William Walton and John Ireland.

At a first rehearsal with the NBC orchestra (while permanent Maestro Toscanini quietly watched maneuvers from a studio corner), he told the musicians: “Meeting an orchestra for the first time is like a rider meeting a new mount—he isn’t quite sure he’ll go over the fence ahead of the horse or the horse ahead of him. I hope we’ll take all the fences together.” The audience at his first broadcast saw little chance that his musicianship would challenge that of wise old Arturo Toscanini, who hand-picked Dr. Sargent and who rarely encourages a serious rival.

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