lliance.

Everybody knows, too, that he has few peers as an interpreter of Bach,
many of whose compositions he unearthed from the organ repertoire and
gave to the general public in shimmering orchestral arrangements, and
that critics trot out their choicest adjectives to praise his playing
of Brahms and all Russian composers.

Everybody knows, further, that he and his orchestra have made a larger
number of phonograph recordings of symphonic music than any other
conductor and band, and that the Philadelphia organization was the
first of its kind to dare the raised eyebrows of the musical tories by
going on the air as a commercially sponsored attraction.

The list, here necessarily condensed, is one of impressive musical
achievements, which many an artist of a more placid temperament than
Mr. Stokowski's would have considered ample to insure his fame.

But the slender, once golden-locked, now white-thatched Leopold is
and always was a restless fellow, a bundle of nervous energy, an
insatiable lover of experiment, innovation and--the limelight.

Those traits began to come to the surface in 1922, when he had been
bossing the Philadelphia band for ten years. About that time he seemed
no longer satisfied with merely playing to his audiences--he started
talking to them.

There were (and still are) two groups of Philadelphia Orchestra
subscribers--the Friday afternoon crowd, consisting largely of stuffy
dowagers, and the Saturday night clientele, composed mostly of persons
genuinely interested in music.

The old society gals went to the Friday matinees because it was
the thing to do. While "that dear, handsome boy" and his men on the
platform were discoursing Beethoven, Schubert and Wagner, the ladies
swapped gossip, recipes and lamented the scarcity of skillful, loyal
but inexpensive domestics.

It was at one of those whispering bees (your reporter, who was there,
swears it really happened) that, during the playing of a gossamer
pianissimo passage, a subscriber informed her neighbor in a resonant
contralto:

"I always mix butter with MINE!" Mr. Stokowski did not address the
audience on that occasion. He gave his first lecture at another
concert, and then he scolded the women not for talking but for
applauding.

Many of the Friday afternoon customers were in such a rush to catch
trains for their Main Line suburbs that they seldom remained long
enough to give conductor and orchestra a well-deserved ovation. So
nobo