Music: Strings

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Smilovits, second violin, Sandor Roth, viola, Imre Hartman, 'cello. They played in the Budapest Royal Opera until the outbreak of the 1919 Revolution when they retired to a distant Hungarian village, devoted themselves for two years to the cult of chamber music. Now the Lener is one of the world's first string organizations. In Manhattan last fortnight its tender, lush playing of Haydn, Mozart and Beethoven won noisy approval from the audience, superlatives from critics; made recent performances by the London String Quartet seem over-fastidious, bloodless by comparison. The Roth Quartet, however, also from Budapest, remains for most critics unrivaled for its flawless finesse.

Taylor Predicament

When a manufacturer accepts an order, whether it be to his liking or not, that order must be filled. In such a curiously commercial predicament is Deems Taylor, manufacturer of musical criticism and music. After his King's Henchman had had a fair success three years ago, he was commissioned to write a second opera for the Metropolitan Opera Company. Since that time he has ostensibly been a musical handyman, editing Musical America, which under his regime went bankrupt, writing miscellaneous articles for magazines, expounding opera on the radio (TIME, Nov. 18). In secret he has struggled with the commissioned opera. His first choice of subject was Candle Follows his Nose, short story by his one-time (New York World) colleague Columnist Heywood Broun. Last spring he announced that he had shelved Candle in favor of Street Scene (TIME, March 18), current Pulitzer-prizewinning play by Elmer Rice, about Manhattan tene- ment life. Last week he announced that he had again changed his mind, that he is now moulding a libretto from George Louis Palmel la Busson Du Maurier's novel Peter Ibbetson, famed in the stage version acted by John Barrymore and Constance Collier. Metropolitan Director Giulio Gatti-Casazza has approved his last choice, ordered the opera complete and ready for delivery by spring.

Mussolinic Opera

Early this month in Italy a royal decree announced that Milan's famed La Scala opera would henceforth be under government control, that a Fascist commissioner would dictate its programs, the selection of artists. Many there were in Italy and the U. S. who linked this news with the resignation last fall of Arturo Toscanini after nine years as La Scala director. He, it is said, foresaw the Fascist rule. He, it is known, can brook no interference with a musical enterprise under his direction.*

Sorry Paderewski

Early this fall the music world worried while Ignace Jan Paderewski, 69, underwent an operation for appendicitis in Switzerland (TIME, Oct. 7). It marveled when he later announced that he would keep U. S. concert engagements scheduled for the winter and spring. Last week, however, he cabled his U. S. manager, George Engles:

"After second phlebitis, though feeling much better, am still in bed. Traveling December practically impossible.. Practicing at present unthinkable. Considering circumstances, tour should be postponed until next season. Inexpressibly sorry to have caused so much trouble and disappointment."

Oltrabella