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The "old guard"—Bruno Walter, 73, Wilhelm Furtwangler, 63, Leopold Stokowski, 67—struck Boston trustees as a bit too old for the job. Another choice, says Cabot, "was to take a big gamble and pick a genius out of the pot. But we didn't see a genius among the younger men."
A Flat Stomach. When Bostonians heard Munch conduct their orchestra on his 1946 visit, his music had shocked some. It seemed more violent and more rushed, particularly in the allegro movements of Beethoven symphonies. But one man was not at all surprised when Munch was asked to succeed Koussy. The New York Herald Tribune's Virgil Thomson had heard Munch conduct 15 years before in Paris and had prophesied that he would eventually lead the Boston. Why? Says Critic Thomson: "He was a natural Boston conductor, flat-stomached and grey-haired, and he created hysteria, particularly in the female over 50."
Pleasing the grey, matronly Friday matinee-goers was certainly part of the Boston tradition. Some of them would miss the little after-concert ceremony in the greenroom: kissing and being kissed by Koussy. Their new conductor was an affectionate man, but not quite the kissing type. Like many another native of Alsace, Charles Munch is a composite of the characteristics of both France and Germany. In him the French bon vivant shines only dimly through a fog of German Weltschmerz: he enjoys life but seldom seems basically happy.
Nevertheless, he gave his afternoon concerts to packed houses and almost all the oldtimers were there—Mrs. William Dana Orcutt, who has held the same second-row seat for more than 20 years, and a score of others, including Cabots, Coolidges and Saltonstalls who have held their favorite seats as long or longer.
An Essential Condition. If Boston was pleased with Munch, there were also reasons why Munch could be pleased with Boston. As U.S. cities go, it had a long tradition of serious music: it had celebrated the end of the War of 1812 with performances of portions of Haydn's Creation and Handel's Messiah. Boston also boasted a club unique in the U.S. Ten or twelve times a year, as their ancestors have done since 1837, members of the exclusive Harvard Musical Association go to their paneled clubrooms on Beacon Hill for a smoker of chamber music, beans, beer and Welsh rabbit.
The orchestra to which Charles Munch has fallen heir was not the U.S.'s oldest. It was founded in 1881, 39 years after the New York Philharmonic. But it was the second oldest symphonic organization, and Conductor Munch was a descendant of a distinguished line of "permanent" conductors. Founder Higginson believed that "the essential condition for a great orchestra is stability." Over 68 years, only nine men had shaped and polished the Boston Symphony until it was—except for Arturo Toscanini's virtuoso radio orchestra, the NBC Symphony, which is in a class by itself—the U.S.'s finest and one of the top four in the world.-