(2 of 5)
The briefest of little bows, his left hand on his hip, his baton tapping smartly on the nearest violin stand and the audience was still, ready for another Toscanini miracle. For a second he closed his eyes. Then his baton cut sharply into the air. First passage was for the violins. The Maestro's stick seemed suddenly to become a violin bow playing tenderly across imaginary strings. His left hand molded phrases, shot up like a policeman's warning to keep the pianissimos. Most conductors make an elaborate show of signaling to the different players, whipping up climaxes. Toscanini had done all that at rehearsal. When he quivered his hand over his heart the men knew that he wanted the most from them. And always he sang, as he wanted the orchestra to sing. Toscanini's way to quench an ovation is to tug at the concertmaster's sleeve, an order for the musicians to leave the stage. But though the players filed out quickly last week the audience refused to leave until Toscanini came back, shyly accepted their cheers and bravos. It was his 67th birthday and he had let the day be advertised for the sake of the Philharmonic-Symphony's campaign for money. But at speechmaking he drew the line. "I talk with my baton," he told the campaigners. In intermission while he was changing his shirt, rubbing his face with cologne, one of the Philharmonic directors said his birthday message for him: "I am a conductor and outside of the province of my own work I am conscious of the lack of power to give expression to my feelings, either to a visible or a radio audience. . . . We recognize our great responsibility. For if I fail in bringing you accurately what has been written, or if this great orchestra fails by one note, we cannot make the perfect whole which he, the great composer, had designed. . . . If each of you today will send a tribute, small or great. . . ." Toscanini's birthday presents amounted to some $50,000, made over $400,000 that the Philharmonic has collected since Harry Harkness Flagler, president of the Society, announced that the Orchestra was in peril of its life (TIME, Feb. 5). The S O S (Save Our Symphony) Campaign was launched in Mr. Flagler's Park Avenue home. There he informed 70 likely givers that $500,000 would have to be raised to assure the Orchestra's existence for the next three seasons. Mr. Flagler's guests knew the Philharmonic's proud reputation, knew that it had never before begged publicly for money. A telegram from Clarence Hungerford Mackay expressed more than it said. He simply regretted that he could not be present but everyone knew that in his prosperous days he had quietly made up many a deficit, that he was too proud to go on acting as the Philharmonic's mouthpiece when he could no longer contribute to its support. President Flagler, who learned what an orchestra can cost when he supported the New York Symphony for his friend Walter Damrosch, went specifically into the Philharmonic's money troubles.* Every possible economy had been made, he said. And well he knows, for he delegates little responsibility, enjoys supervising the tiniest transaction. With box-office receipts off $60,000 this season, he said, the deficit would amount to something like $150,000. He and Marshall Field offered to underwrite the campaign, took over a suite in the Waldorf-Astoria, engaged a staff of professional money-raisers.