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22 NEWSWEE

ARTS
For Chopin Devotees - His 169 Works in 6 Sittings; by a Rising Pianist
In April 1925, a fussy little man of 77 sat down at a piano in Carnegie Hall, New York, grumbling that it was hard work to play and all-Chopin recital. After he had tried out the piano stool at several levels and had rubbed his writs and fingers violently, Vladimir de Pachmann gave a program that has become a musical legend. It was his last performance in America. 
This week another Russian rhapsodist captured some of de Pachmann's glory as a pianist-showman. Alexander Brailowsky, 42, who looks like Noel Coward, started to play all of Chopin's music in six concerts at Town Hall, New York. By Feb. 26 he expects to have performed 51 mazurkas, 27 études, 25 preludes, 14 waltzes, 11 polonaises, and the scattered rondeaus, écossaises, impromptus, and ballads that make up the 169 works Chopin wrote in his short, high-flown lifetime. 
De Pachmann was the most celebrated of all Chopin pianists, but it was his running fire of comment while he played that sometimes drew irreverent music lovers to old Chickering Hall, on lower Fifth Avenue, and later to Carnegie. He hailed friends when he spotted them in the audience and often talked so much he lost his place. His outrageous manners - and great authority - were nott confined to the platform. At a recital given by Leopold Godowsky - de Pachmann called him "the second greatest living pianist" - he rose in his seat to protest his friend's performance of a Chopin rondeau. "No, no Leopold, you must play it like this." He strode to the platform to illustrate his point. 
Unlike de Pachmann, the tall, slender Brailowsky (last pupil of Leschetizky who taught Paderewski) sits at his Chopin utterly obvious of the audience, quite entranced by the music he plays. He is the first ranking pianist to put on an all-Chopin cycle in this country. 

Newsphotos
Brailowsky's dog also likes Chopin

Friends of Wagner Rejoice in Prodigy Conductor. 
"They saw an astonishingly boyish figure, short, small of build, graceful, with one or two of the familiar gestures of his great master [Toscanini] ... though he wiped his brow occasionally with his handkerchief ... he soon made it evident that he was entirely ay home ..."
Lawrence Gilman, New York Herald Tribute music critic, thus rejoiced last week in the debut of the youngest conductor in the Metropolitan Opera since 1884 (Damrosch) - Erich Leinsdorf, who is 25. A Friday evening audience had proffered the newcomer a polite spatter of handclaps as he raised his baton to conduct Wagner's mighty "Walküre." When the final curtain fell, the applause proved he had stolen the show from the Met's Norwegian goddess, Kristen Flagstad.
Opportunity: After conducting at Bologna, Trieste, and Vienna, Leinsdorf in 1935 became Arturo Toscanini's assistant at Salzburg. From the first, the obscure Viennese impresses the master with his assurance and with "an astonishing musical memory." This season he joined the Met conducting staff, at the foot of the list. At the same time Arthur Bodansky, for 23 years the Met's conductor of German opera, took on an unusual load (besides seven Wagnerian works, the revivals of Richard Strauss' "Elektra" and "De Rosenkavalier," both trying because of their orchestration). Last week he took a chance on young Leinsdorf - and made musical history.

Young Alabama Painter Impresses the Critics With Studies of Negroes
Three years ago a Montclair, N.J., woman paid Charles Shannon $250 to do her portrait. His first commission, this gave him enough money to go back to the Deep South - he was born in Montgomery, Ala., 24 years ago - and paint. 
For four years he had worked his way through the Cleveland School of Art (janitor service at 35 cents an hour), interest-

O Say, Can You Sing? The national anthem pitches pyrotechnically from low B-flat ('gallantly streaming') to high F ('rockets' red glare') a range of twelve notes - at least one full tone beyond the average person's true vocal capabilities. For years public-spirited souls have agitated for a change. The D.A.R. - a stout defender of the song against pacifists who object to 'bombs bursting in air' - proposes next month to pass on a more singable score (see comparisons above) by Vincent Lopez, jazz conductor.