For his first program of the year, Koussevitzky has chosen the Boethoven Fifth Symphony, and a new work by Vaughan-Williams called A London Symphony. Unless I miss my guess, half his audience will snore through the first half of the program; the other half will go to sleep in the second. This suggests at once the obstacles against which a conductor must labor in planning his programs.

He has obligations, equally important, to the public, to the composer, and to himself, each of which must be fulfilled without infringing on the others. First of all, a conductor is bound to play a number of works from the standard repertoire, but he must not, certainly, subject his audience to a steady diet of Beethoven's Fifth, Tchaikowski's Pathetique, and the New World Symphony. Of course, there are always younger listeners for whom a playing of these favorites is a new and exciting experience. On the other hand, conductors do not take enough for granted, such as the fact that the present-day concert audience is apt to be a good deal more sophisticated musically than the audience of five years ago; through records and the radio, it has gotten to know much great music, and it demands in consequence a more varied fare than the old concert repertoire. Laziness, too, may account for the way conductors tend to neglect many equally good, but less known works. It takes time, energy and patience to train as orchestra in a new piece, which may be the reason why Barbirolli continues to ride his hobbyhorses of Weber overtures when he might well be exploring the overtures of Gluck and Handel, and why such a conscientious musician as Koussevitzky will in concert after concert stick to Sibelins's first two symphonics, the weakest of them all, and let the greatest, the Sixth and Seventh, gather dust on a shelf.

This leads in reasonably logical fashion to the conductor's next duty, the job of educating audiences to new music, which is a direct responsibility to the composer, and an ultimate one to the public. If he takes this obligation seriously, and at the same time has the genius of being able to recognize genius, he may become, as Koussevitzky has become, a very profound influence on the course of contemporary music. Koussevitzky has, for example, introduced to this country all the works of Strawinsky, Prokofieff, and Shostakowitch; it was at his suggestion, in fact, that Strawinsky's Symphonie des Psaumes was written. It may be just Koussy's good luck that his own countrymen, the Russians, have produced so much musical genius this century. It certainly is Toscanini's bad luck that his own countrymen, the Russians, have produced so much musical genius this century. It certainly is Toscanini's bad luck that twentieth-century Italian music has been the flat vapid stuff it has been, but that doesn't justify his perversity in cluttering up programs with it when there is really great modern music to be played. And John Barbirolli, who has no other axe to grind but the Enigma Variations and an occasional Delius prelude, persists in offering the dryest, most academic manuscripts he can find as samples of modern culture.

Lastly, the conductor owes it to himself, in his programs, to take cognizance of the world around him, and yet maintain a strict artistic integrity. Koussevitzky's inclusion of the London Symphony on a concert program may be reckoned as his tribute to the events which are taking place today. On the other hand, while Mr. Woodworth pays a similar tribute in basing this year's Glee Club program on English and elegaic music, there is something debasing in the fact that German music, which has always figured prominently in Glee Club repertoires, is totally omitted.