The forty-second season of the Boston Symphony Orchestra opens Friday afternoon at Symphony Hall. As usual there will be twenty-four programs given on successive Friday afternoons and Saturday evenings.

Although the selection of a number of soloists, few as they must necessarily be for these concerts, is a matter of no little difficulty, the Symphony management always succeeds in engaging able representatives of all the important fields of virtuosity and eventually in bringing before the audience most of the great artists of the day.

New to those concerts are Frances Alda of the Metropolitan Opera. Toscha Seidel, Marcel Dupre, French organist, and two composers already well known, Georges Enesco, Roumanian violinist, and Alfredo Casella, the Italian pianist.

Madame Matzenauer, one of the returning artists, is favorably remembered for her rendition of songs by Brahms, Schumann, Wagner, and Schubert when she sang with the Orchestra three years ago., Alfred Cortot, of crisp and crystal tone, played the third Beethoven Concerto in C-minor at the concerts in the season of 1919-1920, when Albert Spalding also played the Dvorak violin concerto. Moiseiwitsch, whose "discovery" was the sensation of the year in 1920, played the Schumann concerto in A-minor two years ago. Most of the other soloists are old friends to the regular concert-goers: Suffice it to say that the list includes such tried and proved artists as John Powell, Frieda Hempel, Olga Samaroff, and the leaders of violins and cellos in the Orchestra, Richard Bur gin and Jean Bedetti