musical ebb. He labored
in that job for three years, from 1917 to 1920, but he was out of
sympathy with the Lenin-Trotzky regime and asked permission to leave
the country. It was refused because officials said, "Russia needs your
music."

The fiery Koussevitzky told the Government that, unless he were
allowed to travel abroad, he'd never play or conduct another note in
Russia. They let him go.

Mr. Koussevitzky says that the Bolsheviks robbed him of about a
million in money, land and other property. In illustration of the
state of things that impelled him to leave his native land, he likes
to tell this story:

A minor Bolshevik official came in one day to check up on the affairs
of the orchestra. "Who are those people?" he asked, pointing to a
group of players at the conductor's left. "Those," said Koussevitzky,
"are the first violins."

"And those over there?" asked the inspector, indicating a group at the
conductor's right. "The second violins," was the reply.

"What!" yelled the official. "Second violins in a Soviet state
orchestra? Clear them out!"

Mr. Koussevitzky went to Paris, where he conducted a series of
orchestral concerts and performances of Moussorgsky's "Boris
Godounoff" and Tschaikowsky's "Pique Dame" at the Opera. Between 1921
and 1924 he also appeared in Barcelona, Rome and Berlin. In Paris
he established a music publishing house (still in existence), which
issued the works of such modern Russian composers as Stravinsky,
Scriabine, Medtner, Prokofieff and Rachmaninoff.

In 1924, the offer of a $50,000 salary and the opportunity of
rebuilding the Boston Symphony Orchestra, which had sadly deteriorated
since the days of Dr. Karl Muck, lured him to this country.

American customs, he now admits, at first appalled him. He was amazed
to find musicians smoking in intermissions at rehearsals and concert.
This he called "an insult to art." He forbade smoking. The players
raised an unholy rumpus, but Koussevitzky persisted. The men haven't
taken a puff in Symphony Hall since that time.

The next unpopular move he made was to fire a number of the old
standbys who had sat in the orchestra for most of its forty-four-year
history. "I vant yongk blott!" he cried in his then still very thick
accent. "If dose old chentlemen vant to sleep, let dem sleep in deir
houses!"

The Boston music lovers didn't like it. To them the Symphony is a
sacred cow and they regarded the older members in the light of
speci