in front of him, conduct them. Once in
a while he'd stop short and berate the chairs. Then little Serge's
language was something awful.

Whether these stories are true or not, the fact remains that Mr.
Koussevitzky became a conductor and a great one--one of the greatest.
The yarn of the mirrors is the most credible of the lot, for the
Russian batonist's platform appearance is so meticulous and his
movements are so obviously studied to produce the desired effects that
he seems to conduct before an imaginary pier glass.

For elegant tailoring he has no peer among orchestral chiefs, except,
perhaps, Mr. Stokowski. It's a toss-up between the two. Both are as
sleek as chromium statues. Mr. Stokowski, slim, lithe, romantic in
a virile way, looks as a poet should look, but never does. Mr.
Koussevitzky, broad-shouldered, narrow-waisted, extremely military and
virile in a dramatic way, looks as a captain of dragoons in civvies
should have looked but never did.

Mr. Koussevitzy's conductorial gestures are literally high, wide and
handsome. His wing-spread, so to speak, is much larger than that of
either Mr. Stokowski or Mr. Toscanini, and he has a greater repertoire
of unpredictable motions than both of them put together. Time cannot
wither, nor custom stale, the infinite variety of his shadow boxing.

Those who knew his history look upon Mr. Koussevitzky's joyous,
unrestrained gymnastics with tolerant eyes. They realize that, for
years, he was forced to hide his fine figure and athletic prowess from
thousands of potential admirers.

For Mr. Koussevitzky, before he became a conductor, was a world-famous
performer on the double bass, that big growling brute of an instrument
popularly known as the bull fiddle. In those days all that was visible
of his impressive person was his head, one of his shoulders and his
arms.

He didn't want to be a bull fiddler any more than you or you or
you, and it's greatly to his credit and indicative of his iron will,
consuming ambition and extraordinary musicianship that he developed,
according to authoritative opinion, into the best bull fiddler of his
time.

Here's what happened:

Serge was the son of a violinist who scratched away for a meager
living in a third-rate theatre orchestra. The boy, intensely musical,
wished to be a fiddler like his father. When he was fourteen, his
family gave him their blessing, which was all they had to give,
and sent him to Moscow to try for a scholarship