The Brooklyn Daily Eagle from Brooklyn, New York • Page 28

30 BROOKLYN EAGLE, SUNDAY, MARCH 7, 1943 Brooklyn Symphony! In Third Concert CANDID CLOSE-UPS Sir Thomas Beecham directs the Brooklyn Symphony Orchestra In third concert of his special 5 at the Academy of Music on Tuesday evening, March 9, at 8 30 Sir Thomas, who Is famous for is Mozart readings, opens the pro gram with the Symphony No. 38 in ijor. completing tne rirst nan of the program will be Oscar Levant's "Caprice." It is a short with "a slightly Jazz content," according to the composer, written for Russell Bennett radio program The Inclusion of the Levant "Caprice" will be in keeping with the policy of the Institute to Include the work of an American composer in each concert. The second half of the program will consist of Liszt's symphonic poem, "Tasso." and Schumann Sym phony No. 1 in flat major.

GREER GARSON, just announced winner of the Motion Picture Academy award in Hollywood, and Ronald Col-man, will be seen at Loew's Metropolitan Theater, beginning Thursday, in "Random Harvest," the picture that broke a ten years' record at the Radio City Music Hall and outran "Mrs. Miniver," the film which won for Miss Garson the coveted "Oscar" and the title First Lady of the Screen. Although recognizee as a musical wit and playboy of "Information Please." Oscar Levant insists that he cares most about being recognized as a composer and concert pianist. He is passionately in earnest when he speaks of music, and has had a brilliant career in Levant was born in Pittsburgh. He came to New York in 1922 determined to take the metropolis by storm, used the piano as a means of earning a living.

In 1928 he became an actor in "Burlesque," in which he played the piano in a Garden Pageant on Tuesday Is Poignant Memorial to Murdered Jewry Ly ROBERT FRANCIS It loots like a sell-out for the huge pageant which takes over Madison Square Garden on Tuesday nigh: when 500 actors Join In a mass memorial lor the 2,000.000 Jews murdered by the blood-mad gangsters of Berlin. We caught a rehearsal of We Will Never Die" the other night, and even without the background of Kurt Well's music and Lemuel Ayres' imaginative setting which it will have at the Garden it was evident that Ben Hecht has penned a poignant and bitter arraignment of cowardly Nazi vlclousness. If anything Is needed to focus attention on the grim plight of the 4.000000 Jews remaining in occupied Europe, whose annihilation Hitler has promised as a 1943 Christmas present to the world, "We Will Not Die" sounds that call. It is a challenge to humanity and a cry for vengeance. As usual, the theater has stepped forward generously to put the message across.

Billy Rose is producing the spectacle. Moss Hart is directing It. Paul Muni takes time off from "Counsellor-at-Law" to take on the duties one narrator, and Edward G. Robinson comes from the coast to read another. Herbert Rudley and Luther Adler are sharing two more heavy assignments.

Kurt Baum of the Met lends his voice to principal numbers of the score and It appeared the other night that a major portion of Broadway's population were competing for places among the extras. We noted that Spivy had left her restaurant and Fred Keating his magic tricks to Join the ranks of lowly spear carriers. Roughly, Mr. Hecht's script is divided into three parts. It costs the Axis, he says.

J6O.0OO to kill a soldier of the United Nations. It costs them nothing to kill a Jew. The latter, a scapegoat because under Nazi spite and terrorism he cannot strike back. Tills premise leads to a roll call of the Jewish great, down through history from Moses to the the present day. One by one they pass in review, warriors, philosophers, statesmen, writers, musicians, artists, a Hall of Fame in 100 nations.

"The Jew who will never die." The second part concerns the Jew who is striking back. It begins with the fall of Corrlgador with young Irving Strobllng tapping out the last fateful message on the wireless key. It recalls Jews who have fought shoulder to shoulder with Greeks. French and Dutch, and are still fighting from the fox holes of the Solomons to the Russian Steppes. 300.000 of them now in service for the It Is -In the last sequence, however, that the pageant reaches a climax of sorrowful challenge.

The scene is a peace table, peopled by victorious United Nations and defeated Nazis. Only the Jew is not represented. He has no country. But he Is there, in the shadows around it. The voices of the dead are raised in one scathing Indictment after another to the continuous cry, "Remember Us." The flat actuality of the recital gives it double impact, Nazi trucks grinding a thousand victims under their wheels, starving prisoners forced to clean latrines with their prayershawls, 100 girls in a mass suicide to escape the shame of a Nazi brothel.

A tale of almost unbelievable horror and brutality stretching from Holland to the Black Sea. Two million wantonly murdered. Remember us! When the United Nations finally do sit around the peace table, we would suggest that Mr. Hecht's script be read again. Its message will still ring clear and demanding.

PRACTICE MAKES PERFECT, for violins of the Brooklyn Symphony Orchestra, which will give its next concert under the baton of Sir Thomas Beecham at the Brooklyn Academy of Music next Tuesday evening. speakeasy scene. 5 It Bl Centenary Concert OVERTONES Koussevitzky Plans Russian Program Draws Crown Prince The Boston Symphony Orchestra, under the direction of its distinguished conductor, Serge Koussevitzky, will present the fourth con- in its series of five at the Academy of Music on Friday evening, March 12, at 8:30. Alexander Borovsky, eminent Russian pianist, ill be the soloist with the orches-a in the performance of Proko fieff's Third Piano Concerto. Dr.

Koussevitzky opens the pro gram with Minkovsky's Twenty-First Symphony, to be followed by the Prokofieff Piano Concerto. The second half of the program will be devoted to Tchaikovsky's Fourth Symphony. Crown Prtnce Olav and Crown Princess Martha of Norway will be the guests of honor at a festival concert in commemoration of the 100th anniversary- of the birth of Edvard Grieg at the Brooklyn Academy of Music this -rnoon at 3. The Chamber Music Society, under the dire of Carl H. Tollefsen, has arranged an all-Grieg program for the occasion.

Guest artists will include the 50 members of the Norwegian Singing Soc' Frederick T. Axman conductor; the Norwegian soprano Nancy Ness id the American-Norwegian contralto Ellen tepp. The concert is ur -r the auspices of the Brooklyn I 'itutc of Arts and Sci- The Norwegian "'neing Society will be heard in the hymn "Den Store Vide Flok" and the popular "Landkjening" I The latter Is set to a poem by BJornson, one of Norway's greatest poets. It is the saga ot the Norse Columbus, King Olaf Trygvason, in the year 995 A. depicting his sighting of the Norwegian coast after a voyage from England.

For the performance of both works the Singing Society will be joined by-Miss Repp, lie Brooklyn Chamber Music Society, Anton Wetlesen, bass; Maria de Vries. piano, and Lawrence J. Munson, organ. Alexander Borovsky was born in ittau, Latvia, in 1889. He studied at the St.

Petersburg Conservatory where he won the Gold Medal and Anton Rubinstein Prize. After two years of recitals, he left Russia Szigeti Guest Soloist With A double order of violin concerto? Philadelphians I concert and following the intermis 1921 to tour all of Europe. In Paris, PAULETTE GODDARD and Gil Lamb (Hi-Pockets) are two of the galaxy of stars shining brightly in "Star Spangled Rhythm," now in its fourth week at the Paramount. Co-feature is "Fly by Night." Dr. Koussevitzky was then directing a series of concerts of Russian music.

Borovsky was chosen as soloist for this series. sion will offer Prokofieff's Concerto No. 1 in Major. Mr. Ormandy and the orchestra will lead off with Handel's Concerto, Grosso No.

12, transcribed for orchestra by Conductor Ormandy, and the closing number will be Richard Strauss' "Till Euden- with Joseph Szigeti as the guest soloist, will mark the program which Conductor Eugene Ormandy has arranged for the Philadelphia Orchestra's eighth New York concert in Carnegie Hall. Tuesday evening, March 9. Mr. Szigeti will be heard in Mozart's Concerto No. 5 in A Major in the opening section of the In 1923, the young pianist made Observance of Grieg's Centennial Focuses Attention on His Music By MILES KASTENDIECK In devoting its final concert of the season this afternoon to commemorating the one hundredth anniversary of the birth of Edward Grieg on June 15, 1843, the Brooklyn Chamber Music Society pays a fitting tribute to Norway's greatest composer.

The esteem and love in which his music is held calls for such recognition, at the time of a centennial, and Carl Tollefsen makes a real contribution in planning this program. It will of course be of special interest to the thousands of Norwegians who make Brooklyn their home, but Grieg's music long since broke the boundaries of his native land and became a part of the musical world. Nor has time dimmed its freshness, the lyric beauty or the human appeal. His simple, unaffected utterance went straight to the heart and still engenders a warmth of feeling whenever it Is heard. Greig himself stated his position candidly when he wrote: "Artists like Bach and Beethoven erected churches and temples on the heights.

I wanted, as Ibsen expresses it in one of his last dramas, to build dwellings for men in which they might feel at home and be happy, in other words. I have recorded the folk-music of my land. In style and form I have remained a German romanticist of the Schumann school, but at the same time I have dipped from the rich treasures of native, folk-song and sought to create a national art out of this hitherto unexplolted expression of the folk-soul of Norway." It is true that he wrote no operas, composed no great symphonies, ventured only once into the larger field to write his Piano Concerto. But he served mankind as he wished to serve them. If he dwells in the foothills instead of on the mountain peaks, the world of music is a better place for the beauty that he gave it.

When Hans von Bulow observed that Grieg was the Chopin of the North, he not only placed the composer in excellent company but noted the similarity of their work. Both composers have a similar i finement in their style, a well-defined originality and a marked degree of fastidious workmanship. Grieg may never have equalled Chopin in his piano works but he surpassed him in his ability to handle other instruments and to create songs. It is of course in his 150 songs thc.t he attained his greatest expression. He was a miniaturist pure and simple, and songs were a natural outlet.

His own gift for melody added to his folk-song background led him to fashion S' me lovely works. He could penetrate to the heart of a poem and so capture its meaning and mood in sound that his songs attest to his true lyric faculty. That his music has achieved a wide popularity has sometimes discounted him in the eyes of the intellectualists. There is, however, plenty of originality, individuality and art behind his apparently simple and artless creations. Their very simplicity is part of their greatness.

He "warbled his native wood-notes wild" to the glory of his native pine woods and scenic fjords. While his nationalism has definitely marked him, it has also left the world a treasure that all can share. His centennial should re-establish Grieg as one of those rare souls, a true lyricist. nis first tour ot the united States. He returned to this country In 1925, MUSIC AND BALLET The program with the sprightly Holberg Suite, performed by the Brooklyn Chamber Music ana again in laai, when he appeared at the Bach Festival in Boston as soloist with the Boston Symphony Orchestra.

He made hLs first tour of South America in 1940, came back to New York after a 10-year absence to appear In Cernegie Hall on March 28, 1941. Since then he fulfilled a series of engagements on the west coast, and made another tour of South America. ensemble, conducted by Anders JOHN BARBIROLLI, Emile. This will be followed by a short cycle of four songs "Fisker-Jenten," by Miss Repp, and Grieg's rarely heard Ballade (Variations on a Norwegian air), played by the pianist, Augusta Schnabel-Tollefsen. re HAIKOVSK1 The second half includes four War Stamp Series At the Museum songs by Miss Ness, with Arpad Sandor at the piano; the uneg te Beethoven Sonata Piano Cycle in Seven Evei.

GOLDSAND String Quartet, Opus 27, by the Brooklyn Chamber Music ensemble, and the final group by the Norwegian Singing Society. Berkshire Music SATURDAY AFTERNOON, MARCH 20, at HOFMANN HIS ISOth CONCERT at CARNEGIE HALL Center Suspended The Brooklyn Museum will Inaugurate a new series of war stamp concerts today to be presented in the sculpture court on Sunday afternoons at 2 o'clock. These concerts will be recital programs by such famous artists as Albert Spalding, Percy Such, Ralph Leopold, Mischa Mischakoff, Rudolf Serkin, Max Polikoff and others. (The symphony concerts given at the Museum on Sundays at 1:30 p.m. by the N.

Y. Symphony Orchestra have been discontinued.) The inaugural performance this afternoon will be a piano recital by Ray Lev. Among the other "Cultural education and actlvitie are now necessarily being curtailed in many directions. But after this period of sacrifice, of deprivation Small Tommy Lewis Has Large Role HENRY FONDA is the star of "Immortal Sergeant," new attraction at the Albee, starting on Tuesday. Allyn Joslyn and Morton Lowry are featured.

Added attraction will be "He's My Guy." and of territic concentration on tne immediate tasks of the war effort, since he was 8, when he made is debut as Pud in "On Borrowed ime," with Dudley Digges. Since len he has played in "The Ameri- students of all ages and the public as well, will turn to the Berkshire Music Center and other Institutions of art, deepened by their experience Tommy Lewis may be a little boy but he will have a large part in "Kiss and Tell," the new comedy by F. Hugh Herbert which George Abbott will present at the Biltmore Theater on March 17. Young artists to be heard in this series "Watch on the Rhine, during March will be Percy Such, and with a greater need and appreciation for the arts and especially the English cellist, and Ralph ie revival of "Ah, Wilderness" and "All in Favor," to mention only -s Broadway appearances. Lewis, now all of 13 years, has been ijeopoia, American pianist.

Miss Lev's program will be Vi The One and Only BALLET RUSSE DE MONTE CARLO Brooklyn Academy of Music, Friday Evening, March 19 Chopin Concerto, Rodeo, Classic Pas de Deux, Gait Parisicnno valdi-Bach, Concerto In minor; Beethoven, Sonata in minor, Opus for music. It is for us to use this time to prepare now so that we shall stand ready to meet their need with even greater resources for usefulness, help and inspiration." Thus Dr. Koussevitzky spoke as he announced that although a committee composed of members of the su, menaeissonn, rreiude in minor; Schumann, Arabesque; Brahms, Rhapsody in minor: Rachmaninoff, Prelude in sharp boiirrl. of tlic Boston Symphony Or- BROOKLYN INSTITHJTE OF ARTS AND SCIENCfS chestra, the Berkshire Symphonic TUESDAY EVENING, MARCH 9 minor; iroKoiien, Gavotte sharp minor, and Prelude i major; Chopin, Mazurka i minor, Nocture in minor Scherzo in flat minor. BROOKLYN SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA Festival and the Koussevitzky Music Foundation have been formulating I plans for continuing the Berkshire Music Center the coming Summer, Efrem Kurtz Takes Over Philharmonic John Barbirolli gives his final it has been reluctantly decided, owing to war conditions, to tem-, porarily suspend its activities.

Plans, however, are already progressing for reopening the center as soon as war conditions permit and for assuring its continuance on the FRIDAY EVENING, MARCH BOSTON SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA i-nnnarmonic-aympnony CO Hi SERGE KOUSSEVITZKY, CONDUCTOR this afternoon with Corp. Edward Kilenyi as his soloist In the Liszt Piano Concerto No. 1 in flat pow on sali MING, MARCH 16, at major. The popular program opens ANNE BROWN ffi EVA JESSYE CHOIR wun me oaunet Fantasia basis of nation-wide interest and support. At the earliest possible moment the center will resume its activities with its distinguished fac-', ulty and with the same high standards set in previous seasons.

Fugue on Susanna." and closes with the Tschaikowsky Symphony No. 5 in minor. OX OFFICE, 30 LAFAYETTE AVENUE, BROOKLYN STERLING 3-6700 BROOKLYN ACADEMY OF MUSIC Efrem Kurtz will conduct the orchestra from Wednesday night Miriam Marmein Returns Miriam Marmein. i instead ot tne usual Thursday ELISABETH FRASER and Richard Derr play the role of the ill-starred bridal couple in "Commandos Strike at Dawn," now in its fourth Fox week. "Laugh Your Blues Away" is the co-feature.

and dancer, will make her fi pearance in New York in Edna PIANIST scnption concert) through Sunday afternoon, March 21. After Mr. Kurtz, Fritz Reiner returns for another fortnight. Bruno Walter bockstedkoRBEL will direct the last two weeks of tne season, which ends on April 18. For his first week Mr.

Kurtz will Our Job Is to Save OPERA MANHATTAN METROPOLITAN OPERA SgLUROY introduce to New York concert audi seasons at the Barbizon-Plaza Concert Hall, Tuesday evening, March 9, 8:30. On this occasion Miss Marmein will present several numbers new to New York, among them her comedy entitled "Get Your Man, 1892 Version," in which a young lady of the Edwardian period artfully manipulates the man of her choice towards the matrimonial altar with sugary but firm female cunning. ences three works: Prelude ique next Sunday afternoon. Efrem Zimballst is the week's soloist. On Wednesday and Friday he will be heard in the Beethoven Violin Concerto; next Sunday in the Tchaikovsky Concerto.

The Wednesday-Friday program also contains the first Winter Philharmonic performance of William Walton's Comedy Overture Dollars Buy Utmm NANCY NESS, Norwegian soprano, who will be guest artist ot the festival program commemorating Edvard Grieg's Centennial, presented by the Brooklyn Chamber Music Society at the Academy of Music next Sunday Allegro of Couperin-Milhaud and the Symphony No. 2 of Dimitri Kabalevsky, played Wednesday night and Friday afternoon, and the Llszt-Byrns Grand Galop Chromat- Pay Day K.NABE PIANO I I I) t.UHSHELT.