STAGE AND SCREEN
MUSIC
An Appeal for the L.P.O.
IN the interval of the concert at Queen's Hall on Sunday afternoon Sir Thomas Beecham made one of those provocative appeals for public support which, by their nicely calculated mixture of flattery and insult, ensure that, at any rate, the cause for which he is pleading will be talked about. The un- fortunate thing is that a tendency to exaggerate, which is an artist's privilege, and an indiscreet habit of pulling the legs of his hearers are apt, in conjunction with the past misfor- tunes for which he was by no means always responsible, to produce a certain effect of levity. Sir Thomas Beecham's tongue does less than justice to the sincerity of his aims for which his sacrifice of the rest he was ordered and his action in forgoing fees are sufficient guarantee. He cannot resist a rapier- thrust of wit, even if it is going to wound the friend whose help he is asking. Of course, it would be much less fun for us all, and much less fun for him, if he couched his appeals in the earnest terms of the average speaker in the Week's Good Cause on Sunday nights. But they do get the money, while the tear is in the eye.
I hope Sir Thomas Beecham—or rather the orchestra• for whom he was appealing—will get their Lit o,000. It is not a large sum in a world accustomed to think in terms of millions. But just because we are spending six millions— or is it seven?—a day, it is going to be difficult to raise, even if there were not the competition of causes that at the moment seem more urgent and more worthy. How can we subscribe to an orchestra for our own pleasure before we have done something towards saving a Finn from frost- bite, a Pole from starvation, or our own men from lack of this or that—not to mention all the normal claims upon charity which do not grow less in war-time? And then there is the urge to save money rather than to spend.
Yet though it may be for our own pleasure that we save the London Philharmonic Orchestra, it will not be a wholly selfish act. An orchestra is not just an expensive luxury that you may buy in a shop, it is an aggregation of human beings with livings to earn and children to feed. If they are thrown out of the work for which they have been expensively trained, the members of an orchestra are likely to become unemploy- able; they are certain to suffer severely, and, if their un- employment is of long duration they may easily lose the skill that earns them their place in a great orchestra.
Nor do I imagine that this is an instance to which the argument in favour of saving applies. For that argument holds where the thing bought has to be imported from abroad, or is scarce, and, therefore, liable to become dearer if the demand for it is not reduced. But here we should spend in order that others may have money to save instead of becoming the objects of charity or a burden to the State.
Of course, the totalitarian argument might be that an orchestra is of no practical use at this time, that it contri- butes nothing towards our war effort. To which the logical conclusion would surely be that the whole lot should be marched down to the Tower with Sir Thomas Beecham at their head and be liquidated like a lot of Russian generals. For even in Germany, where they seem to carry utilitarian principles unpleasantly far, I imagine that they have not yet entirely destroyed their orchestras—I believe they can be heard on the wireless, though I generally get a blatant military band—for all that they had, before the war started, driven all but one or two of their finest musicians out of the country.
But if, as we believe, we are fighting this war to preserve the decencies of life and the things of the mind from destruc- tion by the ruthless powers of evil, surely the arts must be included among the things that we wish to save. It is not un- important, therefore, even amid the greater anxieties and stresses of this time, to spare a thought for the future of the fine orchestra that Sir Thomas Beecham has created, and for the men of whom it is composed. I have criticised it recently in this column, as in duty bound, for not being quite as good as it was before its recent reconstitution. But while it remains in being, there is always the possibility of regaining its previous excellence. Once it is disbanded, it will cost far more money to reassemble, even if it is possible to do so
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