at the Philharmonic
School.

He arrived with three rubles in his pocket. At the school he was told
that the only available scholarship was one in bull fiddling. Serge
tried for it and won. He was, so far as is known, the first musician
to make the barking monster into a solo instrument.

An overburdened troubadour, he dragged the cumbersome thing all over
Russia and played it in recitals with amazing success. In 1903, when
Mr. Koussevitzky was twenty-nine (he's sixty-eight now but looks
a mettlesome fifty), the Czar decorated him--the only instance in
history of a decoration bestowed for bull fiddling.

That same year, while giving a concert in Moscow, the virtuoso
happened to look into the audience and his eyes met those of a
stunning brunette in the front row. The owner of the lovely eyes,
Natalya Konstantinova Ushkova, became his wife two years later.

Natalya, the daughter of a wealthy merchant and a rich girl in her own
right, promised him anything he wanted for a wedding gift. "Give me a
symphony orchestra." was Koussevitzky's startling request. The bride
was taken aback, for it was with the bull fiddle that he had wooed and
won her and she hated to see him give it up, but she kept her word.

Now here is where our old pianist comes in. It was at that time, he
says, that Mr. Koussevitzky sent for him and began an intensive course
of study before the triple mirror.

A year or so later Natalya hired eighty-five of the best musicians in
Moscow. After a season of rehearsals Mr. Koussevitzky took his band on
tour aboard a steamer--a little gift from his father-in-law.

They rode up and down the Volga. Every evening the vessel--a sort of
musical showboat--tied up at a different city, town or village and the
orchestra gave a concert, often before peasants and small-town
folk who had never heard symphony music before. In seven years Mr.
Koussevitzky and his men traveled some 3,000 miles.

Came the revolution. Kerensky ordered Koussevitzy and his men: "Keep
up with your music." They did, but it wasn't easy. It was a terribly
severe winter; the country was in the killing grip of cold and famine.

Koussevitzky and his players starved for weeks on end. The boss
conducted in mittens. The men wore mittens, too, but they had holes in
them, so they could finger the strings and keys of their instruments.

The Bolsheviks made Mr. Koussevitzky director of the state orchestras
which, in those early Soviet days, were at low