The Fromson File

A Page From the Past The opening of the Disney Concert Hall, unveiling the architectural genius of Frank Gehry, has given Los Angeles a sense of awareness heretofore unimaginable. Now more than ever, it can ignore the self-important critics from Manhattan who characterize so much of what goes on in the city in the image of unpredictable Hollywood. But almost as important as the exterior that Gehry has created is the interior whose acoustics and physical design enable listeners to fully appreciate the music performed by one of the world’s outstanding symphony orchestras. The Los Angeles Philharmonic finally has a home that it deserves and the public can appreciate. But I hasten to point out that it has not always been that way. A half century or or more ago, the nation’s other large cities, not only had great symphony orchestras, they also had conductors whose stature was every bit as great as any baseball players or movie stars: Koussevitsky in Boston, Ormandy in Philadelphia, Rodzinski in Cleveland, Mitropoulous in Minneapolis and Monteux in San Francisco. And then, of course, there was New York with Bruno Walter, Leopold Stokowski and the incomparable Arturo Toscanini. He was considered the world’s finest conductor and to satisfy the maestro, David Sarnoff coughed up the money to create the NBC Symphony of the Air just for Toscanini. Los Angeles, on the other hand, had an orchestra that was, well, to put it mildly, considered ho-hum. This was the land where the focus was on pop, jazz, Dixieland and the emerging phenomenon known as be-bop. There was nothing wrong with the Phil’s musicians. Many of them earned a real living in the motion picture industry. However. its conductor, Alfred Wallenstein, was not considered one of the nation’s orchestra leaders likely to take it to greatness. That would happen much later. To make matters worse, the Phil performed in a rather nondescript auditorium, actually just a few blocks away from its new home, across from the Pershing Square Garage on Fifth Street between Olive and Hill. And that’s where I came in. The Philharmonic invited Toscanini to come west as a guest conductor, an invitation he promptly but politely turned down. Not only was he quite busy with other engagements, he also had an aversion to flying which, in those days, required 13 hours to travel from the east to west coast. But the Philharmonic’s board was not dissuaded easily. It contacted Toscanini once again and told him the concert it would have him conduct was designed for the benefit of the orchestra members’ Pension Fund. That won the old man’s heart. Toscanini agreed to come west by train. At about that time, I was a tenth grader at Belmont High School and was named by my music teacher to participate in a city-wide music appreciation contest. It was to be broadcast on network radio during the intermission of the following Saturday’s concert for teenagers. To my surprise I emerged as the winner. Wallenstein, the conductor, bent down from the podium and handed me my prizes: a $25 war savings bond, an album of Schubert’s chamber music AND a ticket to Toscanini’s benefit concert. On April 19, 1945, in order to meet the demand for tickets, the concert venue was changed to a much larger auditorium and I climbed the stairs of the Shrine Auditorium to my seat that was in the absolutely last row of the cavernous hall. I was plunked down among the regular concertgoers of Los Angeles who looked at me as if to wonder what I was doing in their midst without my parents. According to the program, Toscanini had chosen a concert that included Rossini’s Overture to Semiramide, the Beethoven Symphony Number 7 in A Minor and Hector Berlioz’ Invitation to a Waltz. What would be a memorable concert to me was about to begin as Toscanini emerged to thunderous applause and took his place on the podium. As the next two hours passed and the concert approached its climax, the music of Berlioz soared through the enormous hall. Then suddenly, in a moment that surely only a genius like Toscanini could have envisioned, a woman dressed in black appeared from stage right, waltzing across the floor. The audience oohed and ahhhed, as I did. We could not believe what we were watching. Suddenly a crescendo of giggles began to rise from the first to the last seats in the house. From stage left, the portly general manager of the Philharmonic, Edwin Johnson, followed by three uniformed officers of the LAPD stepped from the wings. Toscanini, engrossed in his music, was oblivious to the mini-drama unfolding behind his back. The orchestra members valiantly tried to ignore the distraction as the would be dancer, eluding Johnson’s outstretched arms, darted through the cello section and toward the flutes and clarinets with the cops in hot pursuit. By then, the entire hall erupted in laughter and the concert master, David Frisina, no longer able to constrain himself, tapped Toscanini on the shoulder with his violin bow. The maestro looked up, his baton lowered slowly and startled by what he saw, cried out, "Santa Maria!" Which I heard, sitting high up in the Shrine Auditorium. The young woman was overtaken moments later and led away by LA’s finest as the astonished Toscanini just stood and stared. It turned out the young woman, whose name escapes me after these many years, was a dance student who wanted to attract the conductor’s attention. She did alright. Not only did she get that, but Los Angeles, living up to its reputation at that time as a bizarre city engulfed by movie stars, ambitious starlets and other whackos, also heard a promise from the bewildered conductor. Boarding a train the next morning to return to New York, Toscanini vowed that he would never again visit Los Angeles. And he never did. Nonetheless, today’s patrons of the LA Phil, perhaps reading this bizarre tale in the orchestra’s history for the first time might easily be tempted to say, “Who wouldda thunk it?”