By the shores of Gitche Gumee, by the shining Big-Sea-Water, in a distant Bronx apartment, in fact, lives David Farjeon, 10. Last week the Manhattan music world waited, more or less anxious, to hear a musical setting he had composed for Poet Longfellow's "Hiawatha." Ethel Hayden, soprano, was scheduled to sing it at Carnegie Hall.
Wary of prodigies, critics were specially wary of Master Farjeon because in explaining his career to date his mother mentioned "Mother" Stoner. The latter, a Mrs James B. Stoner, appeared some years ago out of Norfolk, Va., with a militant theory for making geniuses out of bright children and with a precocious daughter, who had learned to typewrite at the age of three, to substantiate the theory. "Mother" Stoner founded "the Natural Education System," dabbled in Esperanto, attacked Mother Goose as "unquestionably evil" and set up an establishment in Tuckahoe, N. Y. It was at "Mother" Stoner's in Tuckahoe that Soprano Ethel Hayden had heard Master Farjeon's work and promised to render it publicly.
Newsgatherers found Master Farjeon quite a normal, small boy, however. He could play with other children; he would eat his meals. He had studied music for two years only. His mother was an actress (Claribel Fontaine), his father an actor (Herbert Farjeon) and his great-great-uncle was actor Joseph Jefferson. That might explain without undue "forcing" some of his immature thirst for Brahms, Beethoven, Tchaikovsky "and specially Mozart." Besides the "Hiawatha" setting he had written only an Indian war dance, a "Suite of Characteristics" and a "Rhapsody in Red." The latter, he said, was "after the idea of the 'Rhapsody in Blue,' but they aren't anything alike." And, "I like Gershwin. I saw him once."
Americana
Of Conductor Nikolai Sokolov of the Cleveland Symphony Orchestra, his wife (nee Marix) has said proudly: "Before he was twelve, my husband played in the orchestras of several Russian vaudeville companies that were better than the Chauve Souris." True to this honest origin, Mr. Sokolov is described as "playing poker—either stud or draw—when the boys come in for a game on a Saturday night, peel off their coats . . . and Mrs. Sokolov puts the coffee on to perk and fixes up a snack."