Boston gets a real break with Alec Templeton coming to Symphony Hall tonight to play one of his justly famous piano concerts. Templeton, born an Englishman and blind from birth, is a true artist both in the field of classics and that of musical satire. If you have ever heard him play Chopin and then go on to imitate "an afternoon in a conservatory" with sundry whiskey basses, off-key Wagnerian sopranos, and amazing musical parodies from the piano, you will recognize what unusual talent the man possesses.

To me the peak of his feats is requesting somebody from the audience to pick five notes--any five notes on the piano--which he will weave into an original melody, and at further demand, play that melody in the style of Mozart, Bach, Gershwin, or anybody else handy. Try cooking up a melody sometime out of just a few notes with no preconceived notion of how they should fall, and Templeton's things become just a little baffling.

In regard to his blindness, it would seem that what hampers him is not being unable to see the piano; after all, most good pianists can play blindfolded with very little practice. And since Templeton has spent his entire life in darkness, he has developed a very sensitive touch that enables him to overcome this mechanical handicap. But what undoubtedly must have bothered him is the lack of visual perception of life around him. All musicians, whether they play swing or classical music, draw their inspiration from things that happen to them in life, that they can see and comprehend. All of the natural beauties available to most human beings are thus denied Mr. Templeton.

He feels, however, that he has overcome this, and he explains it in this way: When, for example, he is introduced to someone, he immediately collects the sounds that they make and creates a sound image out of them. In other words, while most people judge a man by his clothes, by the way he carries himself, by his physical characteristics, Templeton judges him by the sounds he makes while he is walking and by the various intonations of his voice. While Mr. X is ordinarily classified as a rather dull, innocuous commuter, Templeton would rate him as a very flat A type, with not too much variation.

This at first may sound a little far-fetched, but think it over, and you will see that there is no reason why the oral sense can't be developed just as fully as the ocular--why judgment by sound isn't just as good as by sight. Naturally it takes a very keen ear and a certain natural sense of psychology to do this, but Templeton can and does do it.

Surmounting this impressive barrier is undoubtedly what has given Templeton much of his musical sense of humor. Listen to the album of records which Gramaphone Shop of New York has done (Brigg's and McKenna's have them) and not only is there some excellent piano, but some of the wildest satire you've ever heard. The man deserves great credit, not only for having overcome a handicap, but for being an accomplished piano player (his latest trick being to play concertos after having heard them once), and for having carried on with a musical tongue in the check where Gilbert and Sullivan left off.