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That the Festival's opening turnout was notable, that advance ticket sales came within $10,000 of liquidating a $40,000 budget, was largely the accomplishment of the committee's energetic head, Miss Gertrude Robinson Smith. Daughter of Corporation Lawyer Charles Robinson Smith, Miss Smith is in her 50s, lives near Stockbridge. She got local people to work as ushers for nothing, persuaded the Thursday Morning Club of Great Barrington to operate a food concession cooperatively with the Festival management. Spreading word of the Festival among Eastern socialites, Miss Smith also labored to make concertgoers of plain Berkshire folk who would never see the inside of a city concert hall.
Staple Beethoven, Brahms, Wagner, salted sparingly with Sibelius and Ravel, was the Berkshire Festival's fare, with the promise that soloists or opera may be served up later if the U. S. Salzburg comes into its own. But music critics who, summer after summer, have faithfully reported mediocre U. S. hot-weather performances, found cause for enthusiasm last week in the Tanglewood tent. Dr. Koussevitzky's men had never played indoors with more sonority or vitality. And when real lightning flashed during the storm music in Beethoven's Sixth Symphony (Pastoral), most of the audience felt that it was no more than an able performance deserved.