St. Louis Post-Dispatch from St. Louis, Missouri • Page 36

Classical Records TT 55 and the A Ts v. EDUCATION ditcJ by THOMAS B. SHERMAN THE REALM of IDEAS SUNDAY POST-DISPATCH, MAY 26, 195 7 JC The Hyde Park Area Revisited Its Restoration Gives Full Play to Earlier St. Louis Style By THOMAS B. SHERMAN IRELAND has produced some of the most beautiful tf the world's folk music but no Irish composer has ever written aa Important opera, symphony or chamber work.

It Is more than ordinarily interesting, therefore, to leara that art music in Ireland Is coming to life, a fact that is disclosed in an effective manner by two record cf "New Music From Old Erin." (Decca. Two 12-lnch LPs.) As might have been expected the greater part of the contemporary output, as here represented, is based on traditional tunes. The treatment however, as in The Dirge of Osslsn" by John F. Larchet and the "Irish Suite for Strings" by Arthur Duffy Is musically mature and well skilled. Ossian's Dirge, incidentally, is a deeply beautiful melody and quite as affecting as the more famous Air" or "The Dark Rosaleen." Less obviously Irish work in their melodic character are the "Megalithic Ritual Dances" which describe religious exercises of a pre-Christian Ireland end srt appropriately primitive in their emotional impact All the music on the two records Is Instrumental and Is played by the Radio Eireann Symphony Orchestra with Mllaa Horvat conducting.

ARTHUR GRUMIAUX'S performances of ttt Back, Concertos for Violin and String Orchestra in A Minor end Major are rhythmically strong, clearly articulated, refined but warm in tone quality. A continuously flowing melodic line indicates that the balance between the solo part and the accompaniment played by the Culler Chamber Orchestra, li always correct (Epic, One 12-lnch LP.) THE PIANIST Felicia Blumenthal and the Fliharmonlct Triestina Orchestra play the Bachianas Brasilelras No. by Heitor Villa-Lobos. This is a wholly engaging work and. like others in the same series, represents a successful effort to combine Brazilian tunes and atmosphere with a Bach-like classic design.

Miss Blumental'i hard-hitting piano style makes the piece sound more percussive than It should. The record also contains the Albenlz "Spanish Rhapsody," an in-consequential use of stock idioms, and the Saint-Saens "Wedding Cake" which Is all Icing. (Vox, One. 12-inch LP.) TSCHAIKOWSKY'S SYMPHONY No. 1, pleasantly lyrical composition that sticks rather close to a formal-istlc pattern, gets a good performance from the Bolshoi Symphony Orchestra of Moscow under the direction of Nicolal Golovanov.

The recording made from a Russian tape is acoustically dull in comparison with the best coming out of the Western European and American laboratories. (Westminster, One 12-inch LP.) LIGHT MUSIC of superior quality is universally treasured and Arthur Fiedler has assembled three choice specimens in that category for a recording by the Boston "Pops" Orchestra. (RCA-Victor, One 12-lnch LP.) In the order followed a the record they are: "La Boutique Fantasque" an arrangement by Resplghl of several charming trifles composed originally by Rossini; the "Divertissement" by Jacques Ibert, a musical romp which ranges from deft satire to frank burlesque; and "The Incredible Flutist" by Walter Piston, a gay piece which describes a traveling circus with a flutist whose music easts a romantic spell on all who hear him. The performance does Justice to the music and la well recorded. A DISCERNING and crisply played performance of the Schubert String Quartet, No.

15 in Major demonstrates again the superlative ensemble work of the Hungarian Quartet (Angel, One 12-lnch LP.) This recording is offered as a part of Angel's Library Series. By GEORGE McCUE FOE CITY-DWELLERS, it ii a familiar and aadly chaiacteristic story the return to the old neighborhood, the eager aeerch for landmarks, the chagrined discovery that the fondly remembered setting of happy memory hai gone Into sickening decline. What surprise, then, Is In itore for former residents of the Hyde Park vl-- clnlty who, after long absence, explore again that mellow section of North St. Louis! There, the story is the other way round. A once blowzy neighborhood, displaying all the symptoms of a slum In the making, has triumphantly pulled itself out of the dumps.

In doing this, the Hyde Park neighborhood has not glossed over old dwellings with imitation materials, nor given its stores the glass block treatment. The rehabilitation process has been in keeping with the original character of the neighborhood. This character, established before the turn of the century, was that of a quiet, solid community of ubstantial but unpretentious homes, spaced about the small park that gives the area its name, served by a cluster of stores on and near Salisbury street and infused with Gemutlichkeit through the facilities of the North St. Louis Turners Hall. FOB ONE WINTER, back when "The Rose of No-Man's Land" was being heard on Just about everybody's player-piano, this writer lived in the Hyde Park area, then well advanced la its long period of decay.

From the point of view of a third-grader, Just arrived from an uncomplicated small town, the section was one of surprises and contradictions. On the icy November day that we moved in, I sauntered down Salisbury street on a tour of inspection, and came upon my first impression of the neighborhood a housewife scrubbing her front stone steps. Her wet hands were blue with the cold, but the steps were white. The building next to this scene of tidiness and self-discipline was a saloon, as liquor-dispensing establishments were called in those days, and as I came nearly abreast of a side door with a stained glass panel, customer came sailing through the panel, landing practically at my feet. He lay on the sidewalk for a moment, dazed and bleeding, then picked himself up with a tinkle of tinted glass, and shambled off.

From this point to the corner of Ninth 0j WW hiiem'wiw DAVE BRLBECK Popular Records By CHARLES MENEES THE DAVE BRUBECK QUARTET performs eight Bru-beck originals in "Jazi Impressions of the U.SA." These compositions, as Brubcck says in the album notes, were Inspired by various sights and sounds encountered while on tour. "Curtain Time," for Instance, is a sketch of excitement on Broadway; "Yonder for Two" Is conceived as a tribute to early New Orleans Jazz musicians; "Sounds of the Loop" has Drummer Joe Morello recalling the clanging of Chicago's El trains and rush-hour hubbub. Brubeck's piano work is as highly Imaginative usual, and Paul Desmond, the alto saxophonist, continues his impressive playing. (Columbia, 12-lnch LP.) DOLE VAN DER LINDEN, regarded as the leading popular music conductor in The Netherlands, Is gaining favor in this country for his recordings of listening music. For at least three of his records now available he employs the same 60-plece orchestra that broadcasts daily over Radio Hilversum, government station of The Netherlands.

A trademark Is the close harmony written by Van der Linden for his 30 violins. "Sensuous strings" they are called on the Jackets of "Onge-trouwd Man Kamer!" (translated "Music for a Bachelor and "Dutch Sax," which features alto-saxophone solos by Cees Verschoor. Admiration of both the maestro, and his soloist for Duke Ellington is evident on both of these Capitol 12-inch LPs. Cees, though not exactly another Johnny Hodges on the alto sax, is technically competent In such selections as "Passion Flower," "Warm Valley" and "Prelude to a Kiss." Non-Ellington compositions include "Moonlight Serenade," "I Didn't Know About You" and a pretty thing by Vernon White called "Mood Nocturnal." The less-familiar program of "In a Casino on the Riviera" (Camden, 12-lnch LP) embraces several Van der Linden originals, among them "Prima Ballerina" and "Slavla." MANTOVANI'S ENGLISH ORCHESTRA Is heard in arrangements of familiar movie songs In "Film Encores" (London, 12-lnch LP). Admirers of the Mantovanl style should find nothing disappointing in these versions of "High Noon," "Love Is a Many Splendored Thing," "Laura," "September Song" and others.

DEL WOOD, whose real name is Adelaide Hazelwood, keeps alive her reputation as "queen of the ragtime pianists" in "Hot, Happy and Honky" (RCA-Victor, 12-inch LP). A rhythm section accompanies her as she runs through "Pony Boy Medley" (in Flat, and G), "Tennessee Waltz," "Black and White Rag," "Beer Barrel Polka" and other tunes of the type that she regularly performs on the Grand Ole Opry radio broadcasts. A LARGE STRING-LADEN orchestra accompanies Tenor-Saxophonist Coleman Hawkins on "The Gilded Hawk" (Capitol, 12-lnch LP). A small ensemble would be preferred, but nevertheless The Hawk keeps his Jazz feeling from being smothered and his tone is as big and moving as ever. Also he shows unflagging respect for melody Instead of getting lost on improvl-satlonal detours.

Glenn Osser is the arranger and conductor for such standards as "It Had to Be You," "Cottage for Sale" and the "Kismet" numbers "Stranger in Paradise" and "Baubles, Bangles and Beads." street was another 20 feet or so, plenty of fpace and time for still another episode in my introduction to the full life of the teeming Hyde Park area. At the corner, I heard the sound cf oncoming hoof beats, and what to my wondering eye should appear but a herd of cattle being moneyed along Ninth street by several horsemen, en route to McKinley bridge and the East Side stockyards. This, it developed, was an almost daily diversion in our old neighborhood. THE HYDE PARK AREA had flavor, but in the Interval between world wars this was a mixture of order and disorder the attractive period-piece brick houses with mansard roofs, immaculately curtained windows and neat yards, and the numerous shabby flats, row houses, tenement dwellings and even shacks built in the back yards of earlier houses to provide more housing on the same ground space. One or the other had to prevail.

The 1955 bond issue set up $4,000,000 to rehabilitate 22 neighborhoods that the City Plan Commission designated as blighted but where buildings were still sound. The South Side Cherokee district and the North Side Hyde Park district were selected as pilot projects. Community councils were formed to enlist voluntary co-operation, and the city's Minimum Housing Standards Ordinance was available to enforce repairs, if necessary. Old sheds, outside toilets and crumbling ashpits began to disappear. Tuck-pointers, plasterers, electricians, plumbers, carpenters and cement workers moved in.

Some householders had misgivings about planting shrubs and flowers because youngsters had been known to tear them out. So, the Community Council distributed seeds and plants among school children, and last Arbor Day the children did a good deal of planting. Now they too have a stake in the neighborhood. MY RETURN VISIT just the other day was the first tour on foot since we had left the Hyde Park section, and the change was almost unbelievable. The authentic charm of fine old houses stands out in attractively planted settings.

The streets and alleys are excellent repair and are swept clean. Heavy traffic is detoured around the area, and some streets are soon to be closed off to make more play space. Similarities to the Georgetown section of Washington, D.C., immediately suggest themselves, insofar as the worth of city architecture of an older period has been recognized and given deserved prominence. The difference is that around Hyde Park, the transformation was made by modest investments the top around $4000, the average about $400 and by many of the residents doing the work themselves. The once neglected row houses of Bremen and Blair avenues are Exhibit A.

Now co-operatively owned and beautifully restored with the pleasing original style intact, they stand as an example of what can and should be done with many more of, this city's older dwellings. At the Galleries i -ii f'XW Uvfe'fu-vl VMS I 1 i ings; Art Mart, 31 North Mere-mec, Clayton, through June 7. BENIAMON MAIMON Paintings and drawings; Petit Plgalle, 4209 Llndeil, through June 8. OPERATION PALETTE On-scene paintings by Navy combat artists; Stlx, Baer Fuller, ninth floor, through May 29. CONTEMPORARY SHOW Paintings by 14 American artists; Givens Hall gallery, Washington University, through May 31.

ARTISTS' GUILD Art section exhibition; 612 Union boulevard, through June 8. PICASSO AFRICAN SHOW Lithographs and Negro sculptures; Martin Schweig Gallery; 4657 Maryland avenue, Wedntsday through July 13. LESLIE J. LASKEY Drawings and prints; Three Arts Shop, 6501 Delmar, through June 15. PEOPLE'S ART CENTER Show of work by faculty members; 3857 Grandel square, through May 29.

HAL POTH Paintings and drawings; Kirkwood Public Library, through June 15. AMATEUR SHOW Paint Is A mil Hi fiillllM JIIIIIfflIif JIfJIlMJflflJ Port row-house structure at Bremen and Blair avenues, restored in original style of mellow brick, mansard roof, squared gables. Quests of Guggenheim Fellows How Six St. Louisans Will Try to Make "the Good, Better" LAST 5 DAYS! TRADE YOUR OLD ALBUMS ON MEW RCA VICTOR CLASSICAL Hi-Fi L. P.s Any old Albums that cost you $2 or more each any brand any speed now worth $1 toward the purchase of any RCA Victor Classical Long Play Albuml chand, assistant professor of German at Washington University.

Father Burrus, who has served as on-the-grounds agent in Rome for microfilming of Vatican documents for the Pius XII Memorial Library here, has a two-year, $5000 award for study of documents relating to Latin American history. He has already left St. Louis. Marchand, who is only SO, will be a visiting lecturer at Harvard in the1 fall term. In February, he and his wife and three children will go to Munich, Germany.

The library there, the Bayrlsche Staats-Bibllothek, is a major repository for Old High German manuscripts, the sort produced in German monasteries between 789 and 1060 A.D. Marchand will test a theory for dating such manuscripts, some of which are of undetermined antiquity. In addition, Marchand's Interest will A Union of Artists AGMA Surveys 20-Year Record By W. G. ROGERS Associated Press Arts Editor.

NEW YORK. "THIS IS I to be a better country in every way for the musical artist!" declares Hy Faine confidently. "There'll be more support from the federal government, slate and city, and more from the corporations, like NBC with its touring opera company. "Of course it isn't getting on as fast as we should like, but it's a lot better than ever before." Hy Faine knows because he is right In the middle, in the middle of artist, manager and contract, in the middle of past, present and future. He is Hyman R.

Faine, national executive secretary of AGMA, the American Guild of Musical Artists. "I see many of the work contracts under which the visiting European does his job, and of them all, French, English or any other, I have never seen one so good as ours." "IT STARTED 21 years ago," he continues, "when people of the stature of Lily Pons, Rosa Ponselle, Grace Moore, James Melton, Mischa Elman, Jascha HeifcU and Albert Spalding were obliged to confess to themselves that, big names though they were, opera and concert management was bigger. It wasn't that they were shoved around, but they suspected they could be." "Lawrence Tlbbett likes to tell," Faine recalls, "of the days when in ono year he kicked back to the Metropolitan Opera more money in fees for being allowed by the Met to sing outside its hallowed hall than the Met paid him to sing inside." That was because of Clause 12: the Met made an artist cross his heart and hope to die if he ever appeared outside without Met permission and without coughing up a percentage. AGMA fixed that, though only partly. Now the Met takes no fee but doesn't let the artist sing if it doesn't wish to.

There was the recent case of Richard Tucker who signed up for a TV show on his own but abandoned it at the insistence of the Met, which had a role for him in one of its own TV programs. IN JUNE AGMA celebrates the twentieth anniversary of its formal affiliation with the Associated. Actors and Artists of America, the FOUR A's, an AFL union. It has Jurisdiction over concert and opera singers, instrumental soloists, dancers, stage directors and managers. What does it do for them? It is manager, lawyer, spokesman, guardian and on occasion Dutch Uncle to speak tternly to erring members who Jeopardize the organization's good name or their associates' professional prospects.

It signed a contract with New York City Opera Isst fall Just about a matter of minutes before the rise of the first curtain, Faine says. It bickered with Met Manager Blng through a long hot summer to secure new benefits. The outfit, according to Faine, ndw points to such accomplishments as these: MINIMUM PAY for average singer or dancer tip 100 per cent in 20 years; pay for rehearsals; sickness benefits; insurance against injury on" tour; guarantees that allow no individual or group to be stranded out in the sticks; jobless insurance and Social Security; in some cases severance and retirement allowances; travel schedules that cause no undue hardship. "What we most want," Faine says, "Is continuity of employment. If we hav a membership of 3000, 1 estimate that only half of them have enough work in a year to earn their livings.

"To better their conditions, we must put up our arguments not with a great rich corporation like an auto manufacturer, but with a concert or opera management that can almost never meet its bills. About 80 per cent of the groups we negotiate with are deficit groups. So we do what we can, though in the long run the public must help the artist." ONE TOPIC for the panel discussions scheduled here June 10 to 12 is "The concert artist's need for a growing public." Among speakers at the various sessions will be Agnes da Mille, Reglna Resnlk, Normsn Dello Jolo nd Roland Hayes. AGMA has offices in New York, Philadelphia, Chicago, Lot Angeles, San Francisco and Seattle. Tlbbett is honorary president; John Brownlee, president; Heifetz, first vice president 1 id' Here's your chance of a lifetime to build the Long i'lav classical record library of your dreams I A golden opportunity to start, or modernise, your collection of the world's greatest music with fresh, new hi-fi recordings! Trade in your out-of-date, record albums on any of the wonderful classical L.P.'s in RCA Victor's great catalog.

YouU thrill to New Orthophonic High Fidelity recordings of tht World's Greatest Artists performing your favorite music. Opn Mon. vni FrU fvtnlngs Nnt Wek By WILLIAM K. WYANT "TIfY NECESSITY is yet greater flian mine." With these words, known to every schoolboy, the great and gallant Sir Philip Sidney was long supposed to hive rejected bottle of water after he received his mortal wound at Zutphen, and directed that the water be given to a dying soldier. The famous battlefield incident never happened, but Washington University's scholar of the English renaissance period, William Rlngler considers the legend entirely consistent with Sidney's character.

Rlngler, 45-year-old professor cf English, Is one of six St Louis teachers and artists who won fellowship grants from the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation last April. Five will travel to Europe, two of them for the first time. Their projects are varied and sometimes, to the layman, a bit recondite. In each Instance, they were selected as men who had "demonstrated the highest capacity for original scholarly research and artistic creation." For Ringler, It was the second allocation of funds from the Guggenheim mining empire fortune. He will leave in June with his wife and three small children to spend 15 months in England, finishing up a project that started with a previous Guggenheim award in 1847-1948, and launching another.

He will see through the presses his critical edition of the complete poetical works of Sir Philip Sidney, amounting to one fat volume, and gather material for a history of Tudor poetry he plans to write. Sidney, of course, was an Elizabethan gentleman, and the manuscripts of his poetry are not in his own script. He wrote for his own amusement, and when he had finished a piece of writing, he would turn it over to a secretary to have a fair copy made. Tudor manuscripts containing the author's hand are thus extremely rare, and generally it is a case of a few scribbled corrections or amendments to the fair copy. IT IS IMPOSSIBLE to talk with Ringler and the other Guggenheim fellows here without coming to share, to some extent at least, their enthusiasm concerning the undiscovered wealth of the past and present So much remains to be explored.

So much of what man thinks be knows has thus far been illumined only fitfully. Regarding Elizabethan literature, Rlngler remarks, "They've Just scratched the surface." Manuscripts of the even more remote past will be the attraction in Europe for two other St Louis Guggenheim fellows, the Rev. Ernest J. Eurrus, S.J., director of the Jesuit Historical Institute, St Louis University, and James W. Mar- nineteenth and twentieth century novels, with particular emphasis on the emotional impact of modern science on the literary mind.

An example is the corrosive effect of skepticism on man's belief in a life eternal. In developing his essays, now about half done, Eoff is treating what he calls "a series pf pairs of novelists," ranging from Charles Dickens to Jean Paul Sartre. Typically the pairs consist of a Spanish writer linked with a French or English one. For instance, Flaubert's "Madame Bovary" is considered In relation to "La Regenta," of Leopoldo Alas, and Zola's "Germinal," is paired with Perez Galdo's "Fortunate Jaclnta." THE SIXTH GUGGENHEIM award in St Louis this year was a senior fellowship amounting to $14,000 for Edgar Anderson, professor of botany at Washington University and curator of useful plants at Shaw's Garden. Anderson, 59, is internationally known as a geneticist and has mnde brilliant forays into other scientific fields.

His was one of about 10 Senior grants made this year. While continuing to teach the second semester of each year at the university, and perform duties at the garden, Anderson will leave St Louis for intermittent periods to work at Princeton and elsewhere on a new method he has evolved for obtaining valid conclusions from complex statistical data. He will travel to Colombia, and possibly to Ethiopia. It is a method Anderson developed In the study of plant variations that occur in nature, with emphasis on the light these processes throw on evolutionary change. He describes it as technique for "measuring several things at once a way of getting into messy problems." Anderson won a Guggenheim award In the early 1940s for work In California and Mexico.

Until about a year ago, be was on the five-member committee of selection of the Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, He is now a referee in genetics, appraising applications in that science. THE GUGGENHEIM differs from some other foundations, Anderson said, in that it is interested more in the individual than in the project. The objective, he is not to help unnroven young people get started but to "enable the good to be better." Anderson estimated about one in five applications were successful. "The highest rejection rate is in the field of creative writing," Anderson remarked. "Everybody thinks he can write, and there is always the housewife who thinks she is another George Sand." EDGAR ANDERSON lafttottt PIANO CO.

GA. 1-4370 9H OLIVE ST. na Makes You Laugh Include Gothic manuscripts which date from 350 to 550 A.D. These are written In an earlier sister language to German nd there are only about nine of them, mostly fragments of Bishop Wulfila's translation of the Bible. Marchand will get down as far as Naples, where there is a non-Biblical charter or deed In Gothic, the only one of its type.

FOR SHERMAN H. EOFF, professor of romance languages at Washington University, and Fred Becker, instructor in printmaklng at the School of Fine Arts, the Guggenheim awards, about $3000 In both cases, wHl mean among other things a significant extension of travel experience. Neither has ever been to Europe although their fields are deeply involved with European culture and history. Eoff, who teaches Spanish, wiH spend most of the summer of 1953 doing research in libraries of Paris, Madrid and the Spanish town of Sentander, on the Bay of Biscay." Hs will finish up a book of essays on philosophic attitudes of Enjoy HEflR1 Bally end Stitfey to ffcf POST-DISPATCH .3.