Barbirolli in California 1940-43: A little-known chapter

2020 sees the 50th anniversary of the death of Sir John Barbirolli, probably the Hallé Orchestra's greatest conductor. This is a slightly amended version of an article originally written in 1994 for the Barbirolli Society magazine.

John and Evelyn Barbirolli in the USA

I had the privilege in September this year of joining the Hallé Orchestra and Kent Nagano on their week-long stay in Los Angeles, playing nightly at the Hollywood Bowl to audiences of up to 16,000.

One aspect of the visit was to research the links which John Barbirolli had with California during the war years, an aspect of his career which is relatively little-known. In fact there is evidence that in early 1943, before the invitation from the Hallé in England was confirmed, his hopes were chiefly set on a permanent conductorship in Los Angeles, until the temporary collapse of the orchestral organisation there.

These facts emerged from the discovery of his entire professional correspondence from his time in the USA, five sacksful of letters, still in the original files, which had been in the Hallé Orchestra archives (which are unsorted in the main) from, presumably, 1943 until the present. I was permitted to examine these in detail and they have now been deposited in the Royal Academy of Music library, at Lady Barbirolli’s request. There is a mine of information here, not only about JB but also many aspects of the musical life of the United States during the war years (there are letters to and from Barber, Bliss, Britten, Grainger, Randall Thompson, Ernst Toch and William Grant Still, among others, plus a host of performers of the time) but the most revealing details of all were about his work in California.

I wrote briefly about this in the Manchester Evening News in July 1993, after consultation with Lady Barbirolli. Contact with Michael Kennedy confirms that he did not have access to these papers when writing his biography, though clearly there was other correspondence of the time which he did see. What follows is the result of research in the papers found in Manchester, together with some on-the-spot digging and personal interviews in California this year.

Barbirolli was 37 years old when he was appointed to be Toscanini’s successor as chief conductor of the New York Philharmonic-Symphony Orchestra in 1936. He enjoyed the unusual privilege, for the time, of a three-year contract – which was later extended – and the end of his association there was only finally announced with the appointment of Artur Rodzinski, on December 29, 1942, as conductor for 1943-4.

Before the beginning of the Second World War, he spent time in England when not obliged to be in New York. The first suggestion that he might visit California came from Giorgio Foa of Santa Monica, in March 1939, and he replied that his New York season was too long to make a visit.

But war changed many things. A number of British musicians found themselves in the United States and unable to return home, including Benjamin Britten (whose Violin Concerto and Sinfonia Da Requiem were both premiered by Barbirolli with the New York Philharmonic in 1940 and 1941 respectively).

Hollywood, summer 1940

Another was Arthur Bliss, who in March 1940 wrote to Barbirolli from the University of California at Berkeley. The following month, Barbirolli received an invitation to conduct the Los Angeles Philharmonic at the Hollywood Bowl and wrote to Bliss saying he hoped he and Evelyn might see him in California.

In July Eugene Goossens (music director in Cincinnati) wrote wishing him well in Hollywood, pointing out that he had conducted his own 40th concert there two years before. He said he had noticed a regrettable falling off in the orchestra when he was last there, and seemed to attribute it to their new ‘wicked policy’ of inviting some of the studio directors to conduct.

In the event JB appeared with enormous success at the Hollywood Bowl, and spent that summer in California. Michael Kennedy records[1] his debut concert, in a programme of the Enigma Variations, Delius’ On Hearing The First Cuckoo, and Brahms’s fourth symphony, as being before an audience of 12,000, one of the largest then ever recorded. The Los Angeles Music Center archives actually report this attendance as 7,761, and the following week’s as 11,187 – which could have been a record for a classical programme at the time – for a programme of Rossini (Semiramide overture), Schubert (fifth symphony), Weinberger (‘Under The Spreading Chestnut Tree’ Variations) and Tchaikovsky (fifth symphony). However, Bruno Walter attracted 11,793 three weeks later, and 16,133 on August 30th, and the season average was 11,865 (including light music events), itself a peak not reached again during the war.

The concerts were certainly a success, though. Barbirolli had married Evelyn while in England in July, 1939, and she wrote to a friend describing these concerts at the Bowl: “... the second was a real furore ... It was a grand audience too, and they all stayed at the end and yelled and cheered and whistled. In fact the lights had to be turned up and the orchestra sent off the platform before the people would go, even after eight recalls ... After the first concert even the critic of the Los A. Times said that ‘the orchestra played so well and so differently from either of the previous concerts that one wondered if they were the same musicians’ ... we were both very happy at this real triumph. John feels too that it is a very real one when you consider that last season’s conductors included Walter and Stokowski ...”

They had lunch with Bruno Walter (“he is such a gentleman, in the best sense of the word, as well as a great artist”) and went round the movie studios. It was a surprise to find that “little Judy Garland ... came off the set where she had been singing a cheap musical comedy sort of number and informed John that she had been very upset to miss his first concert ... it transpired that she is a real Delius fan, and possesses even a very early record of a Delius piece made by John years ago. Mickey Rooney said his favourite composer is Ravel! It seems that John has a great following in the film studios and the stars have parties to listen in to the Philharmonic broadcasts on Sundays ... We saw quite a bit of Edward G Robinson and also Walter Pidgeon, both very musical and very keen on it and most charming, cultured people.”

Barbirolli also met the black American composer William Grant Still, with whom he formed an immediate and warm relationship, and his wife Verna, at their Los Angeles home, 3670 Cimarron Street.

Winter season 1940-41

In September 1940 Barbirolli sent Edward G Robinson a personal inscribed set of his recordings of Schubert’s fourth symphony. And the next month he signed a contract for concerts for the Southern California Symphony Association in San Diego, Claremont, Pasadena (this with Heifetz as soloist in the Mendelssohn concerto), Los Angeles, and Santa Barbara, in January and February 1941. During this visit he met William Grant Still again.

John, with Evelyn, and Emile Ferir, Alfred Kastner and Henri de Busscher of the Los Angeles Philharmonic, had enjoyed a ‘reunion’ as former members of the Queen’s Hall Orchestra of London, and in October 1940 John sent a photograph to its founder, Sir Henry Wood. His reply was duly documented in the LA Philharmonic’s Symphony Magazine in January 1941, and the letter is reprinted in a recent biography of Wood by Arthur Jacobs.[2]

Hollywood, summer 1941

The summer of 1941 was also spent in California. The Barbirollis had become great friends of Ernst Toch and his wife Lilly, who helped to find a house for them for the summer. (They stayed at 1591 Sunset Plaza Drive, Hollywood, a pleasant area towards Beverly Hills). As Michael Kennedy records, Lady Barbirolli remembers their evenings of chamber music with the Francescattis, Jose Iturbi and his sister, the Horowitzes and the Gimpels (Bronislaw Gimpel was then the leader of the Los Angeles Philharmonic – Jakob Gimpel wrote to JB in April 1941 recalling previous ‘informal evenings of music’ and hoping there would be more). A letter from Evelyn of September 1941 describes these, “with John as Cellist and Chef!”

During the summer Barbirolli met Still again, and also Gretchaninoff, Castelnuovo-Tedesco, and Otto Klemperer.

Dr Bruno David Usscher of the Los Angeles Daily News was JB’s adviser about programming for his Los Angeles work at this point. He pointed out to him that a Hollywood Bowl programme should not begin or end with a symphony, as the lights were expected to be turned up a few minutes from the start, to admit latecomers, and people would begin to depart towards the end to beat the traffic queues (they still do!).

There were in the event four Barbirolli concerts at the Bowl in August, one with Heifetz as soloist drawing 9,970, and in another Helen Traubel the soloist in a Wagner programme. JB wrote to a friend: “The boys in the orchestra have been really responsive in giving everything I have asked of them ...”, adding that it rained on the night of the final one – for only the second time in Hollywood Bowl history – so only 7,000 came (this was the Wagner programme, and the official figure was 7,956).

The concert on August 8, 1941, is of particular interest, as a recording both of the rehearsal and performance of one work from it has survived – possibly the oldest recording of JB in rehearsal there is. The work is the Intermezzo (or Interlude) from The Passing Of King Arthur (later renamed The Legend Of King Arthur) by Eleanor Remick Warren, an American composer then in her early 40s. She died in 1991. With the present day vogue for the work of women composers, she seems to be enjoying something of a renaissance, and the complete work has been recorded on CD and is also, I understand, to be given at the Three Choirs Festival in 1995. It was premiered by Albert Coates on the West Coast in 1940, and JB, having heard a recording of it and met Miss Warren, gave the Hollywood Bowl premiere of the Intermezzo, one of its best sections, the following year. He was ahead of his time.

This concert also included JB’s own ‘Purcell Suite’, heard for the first time in Los Angeles, and the suite from Stravinsky’s Firebird, in which, as Michael Kennedy records, Barbirolli noticed an error in the printed parts of which Stravinsky himself, who was present, was previously unaware.

On August 11 John and Evelyn were guests at a reception at the Los Angeles Crescendo Club, whose members included Schoenberg, Varese, Toch, John McCormack, Jakob Gimpel, Hugo Strelitzer and Albert Coates.

Winter season 1941-2

Returning to Los Angeles in November 1941 for a series of 11 concerts, JB’s first programme was on November 20 (repeated the following afternoon) at the Philharmonic Auditorium, with Horowitz the soloist in Rachmaninov’s third piano concerto. The programme opened with Elgar’s Introduction And Allegro, with the string quartet comprising Bronislaw Gimpel, Anthony Briglio, Emile Ferir and Lauri Kennedy. Randall Thompson’s second symphony was also performed (Barbirolli’s correspondence file contains detailed notes from the composer on how this should be realised – it was, incidentally, the first piece that Koussevitsky allowed the young Leonard Bernstein to conduct in public in Boston, only a year or two later, according to Humphrey Burton – and a letter from Thompson thanking him for scheduling it for Los Angeles and adding ‘I was enchanted with the way you performed it last year’).

After concerts in San Diego, Pasadena (with Horowitz) and Claremont, Barbirolli conducted at Hollywood High School on November 28th, and on December 3rd a gala Tchaikovsky concert in aid of medical aid to Russia was given in the giant Shrine Auditorium, Los Angeles, advertised as ‘Barbirolli, Heifetz, Horowitz’ (all donating their services). The previous day, his birthday, the orchestra surprised him by singing ‘Happy Birthday’ as he stepped on to the podium to begin the rehearsal.

December 4th and 5th were LA Philharmonic ‘pair’ concerts in which JB’s Elizabethan Suite was given its premiere. Three days later Pearl Harbor was bombed. Barbirolli conducted another ‘pair’ programme on December 18 and 19.

With America on a war footing, musical activity struggled for survival. Fuel shortages were eventually to be a factor in the suspension of concerts by the Southern California Symphony Association, while in New York the Philharmonic-Symphony was celebrating its centenary with a special year’s programmes with a variety of guest conductors, involving Barbirolli less than previously.

He was not unhappy with that arrangement: he had written to an English journalist friend in August 1941 that he was willing to return to conduct without fee for the war effort back home, and the resulting entry in the London Sunday Times was widely noticed. But in the United States it was suggested that he might enlist in the US Army. As a loyal Englishman he did not want to give up British citizenship, and in the summer of 1942 he returned to England for a series of morale-boosting concerts.

The Churchillian determination to carry on to victory which he found back home moved him deeply, but there other factors to consider. What would be the next step for the New York Philharmonic? Could there be a permanent opening in Los Angeles? Did the movie studios have anything to offer?

Hollywood, summer 1942

The Californians were working under difficulties. The US army had ordered an audience limitation of 5,000 and dimming of lights at the Hollywood Bowl. The doughty Mrs Florence Irish, executive vice-president and manager of the Southern California Symphony Association, had only secured backing from her board for continuing the Bowl concerts at all by telephoning every potential season ticket buyer and asking for an assurance that they would come even under war conditions. She also persuaded artists including Rachmaninov, Walter, Heifetz, Rubinstein, Horowitz, Beecham and JB to do two concerts for the price of one.[3]

Barbirolli conducted at the Hollywood Bowl in August and September, 1942: on August 27th with Bronislaw Gimpel the soloist in Wieniawski’s second violin concerto (and the Enigma Variations in the programme), on September 3rd with Lauri Kennedy the soloist in Saint-Saens’ cello concerto (and Holst’s St Paul’s Suite in the programme), and on September 4^th and 5^th a pair concert of Tchaikovsky favourites with Rubinstein the soloist. The first two drew small audiences by Hollywood standards (around 2,000 each), but the latter two had 7,213 and 6,258, against a season average (all entertainments) of 4,112.

Winter Season 1942-3

JB was back in Los Angeles in October (this time at 9762 Olympic Boulevard, Beverly Hills) and was contracted for concerts from November through January. All was not well. In November he wrote to his New York confidant Bruno Zirato (Arthur Judson’s deputy at the Philharmonic) about the situation he found on arrival in Los Angeles. He was exasperated to find the orchestra had not even been engaged for the concerts, and spent several hours with Mrs Irish and her assistant, William McKelvy Martin, and also with the first chair men of each section, hiring the players one by one.

This letter to Zirato is one of the most fascinating of all in the archive, as it describes in vivid terms the goings-on behind the scenes in the Southern California Symphony Association in late 1942. There may be another  occasion to quote it in full, as JB maintains a detached sense of humour about all the in-fighting, but suffice to say that the main observation he makes is that some members wanted to bring Stokowski in as principal conductor the next year – “this of course meant, if true, that no matter how good or successful my concerts might be this season, I was to be out after it”.

JB confronted Mrs Irish and Martin on the subject and pointed out that “if they have already made up their minds to engage him as permanent conductor for 1943-4 it would be fairer to say so now, rather than go on talking loudly (as they all do) of how wonderful it would be to have me here permanently.”

There were apparently ‘tears, reconciliations, etc.’, and he was told that ‘Stokie’ had in a recent rehearsal painted a ‘brilliant’ picture of what he might do if the Philharmonic were put under his command, with his influence in the film world, and that Martin and Irish “fell for all this rigmarole like a couple of ‘lambs on Wall Street’ ” because they thought Stokowski could start a rival organisation if he didn’t get what he wanted. However, the union put a stop to all such ideas, and JB concludes: “Now the whole thing seems to have blown over, but I wanted you to know what a strange, unsettled atmosphere this is.”

After another Hollywood High School programme (November 15th), he opened at the Philharmonic Auditorium on November 19th and 20th with Jose Iturbi the soloist in Mozart's E flat concerto K482, and including the West Coast premiere of William Grant Still’s Plain Chant for America, a patriotic work which JB had premiered in New York the previous year.

There was a young people’s concert on the 21st, and broadcast concerts from Earl Carroll’s Theatre on the 22^nd and 29th. The December 3rd and 4th Philharmonic ‘pair’ were described as a ‘United Nations Concert’, with items representing the US (Marcelli’s Ode To A Hero, premiere), Brazil (Villa-Lobos), Britain (Elgar’s Carillon, for which JB persuaded Walter Pidgeon to appear as narrator), Russia (Arensky’s Variations), Norway (Grieg) and the Free French (Debussy’s La Mer).

December 5th was spent in San Diego, for a free concert at the US Naval Hospital, and the following day the broadcast Earl Carroll Theatre concert included the young Shura Cherkassky as soloist in Rachmaninov’s second concerto. Cherkassky, who of course is still going strong on the concert platform, in his eighties, had been recommended to Barbirolli by his teacher, Josef Hofmann, in April 1940 as ‘my prize pupil’, with the colourful phrase ‘he literally eats music’.[4]

December 7th and 12th were taken by concerts in Pasadena and Claremont, and on the 13th there was a further broadcast from the Earl Carroll Theatre, with Louis Kaufman the soloist in the first movement of Mendelssohn’s violin concerto. These broadcasts, called ‘The Standard Symphony Hour’ because of sponsorship by the Standard Oil Company (now Chevron), were recorded on 78rpm discs, known as ‘airchecks’, and the Mendelssohn movement from this concert has survived and is a fascinating performance.

Louis Kaufman's widow Annette, now 78, is still in Los Angeles, and told me how she remembered seeing “a little black car phut-phut-phutting up to the hall, and out got a very small man with a very big hat, and his wife, who of course was much taller”.

JB’s remaining two ‘pair’ programmes in Los Angeles were on December 17th and 18^th (with William Primrose the soloist in Walton’s viola concerto, a Los Angeles premiere, and ending with the Mastersingers prelude), and January 7th and 8th, 1943, including Vivaldi’s concerto for four violins op. 3 no. 10, with John Pennington, David Frisina, Nina Wulfe and Anatol Kaminsky the soloists, Abraham Chasins’ Parade and Castelnuovo-Tedesco’s Indian Suite.

David Frisina, who played in the second desk under Barbirolli, became concertmaster of the Philharmonic in autumn 1943. He is still in Los Angeles, and told me: “He was a great man. I liked him and enjoyed working with him. We spoke Italian a little bit together, too.”

At the end of 1942 there was clearly great uncertainty about the future of music in Los Angeles, and his experience of putting the orchestra together and getting them up to standard in a few days may have stood him in good stead for the challenge to come in Manchester, but JB was greatly admired there, and there was still talk of a permanent appointment.

“I believe that Irish and Martin would genuinely like to have me here, and that the orchestra and all the members of the board would also. (Harvey S) Mudd (the president) and doubtless other board members feel that this is not the time to embark on having a permanent conductor, but I do feel pretty certain that if they should decide to engage one, I am the person they all have in mind ...” he had told Bruno Zirato in November.

This feeling must have been encouraged by a long letter from Hugo Strelitzer, the Los Angeles Philharmonic chorusmaster, in December 1942, “just to let you know what we professional musicians here think of your musicianship and leadership in regard to the development of art and music in Los Angeles.” It continued to describe at some length the ‘stagnation’ in musical life since Otto Klemperer’s retirement from the orchestra, without ‘true and inspiring leadership’ or ‘any courage in building interesting programmes’ in the absence of a permanent conductor, and concluded: “Thursday night’s performance (i.e. December 17th) has confirmed my belief that we have in you the man who more than anybody else is called to take over the leadership of the orchestra ... How this orchestra has improved under your baton is almost unheard of ... even the 'Meistersinger' prelude, heard so often, sounded like a new piece of music ...” He also expressed the opinion that if JB were to come to Los Angeles there would at last be a chance to build up a resident opera company, and referred to a long conversation they had previously had about this. Barbirolli replied gratefully, but without any evident hope of such things as opera happening in the short term.

Mrs Kaufman told me the LA Philharmonic membership were enthusiastic about JB, but some members of the board thought his stature was against him. “I think Florence Irish and William Martin wanted to have him, but were outvoted at the time,” she said. David Frisina’s wife Corinne says she thinks he was ‘in line’ to be the next conductor, but ‘political’ factors intervened.

There was also a completely different and tantalizing approach from the film director Henry Koster, at Universal Studios. “We have been thinking of making a motion picture around a symphony orchestra ... and I would very much like to talk to you,” the letter read.

Barbirolli’s secretary in California was Rudolph Polk (formerly Heifetz’s secretary), and while away in Canada for more concerts in January, JB cabled Polk as to whether there was ‘any prospect of Universal offer materializing?’. Polk replied that Koster was still considering the script.

It is my belief that this project was the film that became Music For Millions, directed by Koster, in 1944. Jose Iturbi, not Barbirolli, secured the role.

In February 1943 Evelyn Barbirolli wrote to William Martin from Canada about John’s last Carnegie Hall concerts in New York, and some future possibilities, which included a trip to Palestine and ‘maybe’ England. She concluded: ‘ ... still hoping your season will be saved’. Martin replied that the current season had been curtailed, but all scheduled concerts would still be given over 15 weeks by putting them in pairs, with ‘dark’ weeks between.

Barbirolli wrote to Mrs Irish on February 20th, 1943, that he was sorry ‘you are definitely closing’ and hoping that ‘my stalwart soldier of symphony will find some way of carrying on.’

However, there had been another development. A telegram came from the Hallé Orchestra in England. It was to be re-formed on a full-time basis, and a permanent conductor was sought. (Sir Henry Wood was the committee’s first choice for the job, but at the age of 74 the founder of the ‘Proms’ turned them down. Barbirolli knew nothing of that approach).

Even in March, as he was about to leave New York, Barbirolli told more than one correspondent he was still intending to return to the USA later in the year, after summer concerts in England and a visit to the troops in Palestine. But, Lady Barbirolli remembers, it was when he received the formal offer from Manchester that he firmly made up his mind to go to the Hallé. He stayed with them, latterly in the specially-created position of ‘conductor laureate for life’, for the rest of his days.

One could readily speculate on what might have happened if this, or that, factor had been different. If Barbirolli had been cast for the film by Koster ... if the Southern California Symphony Association had offered him a permanent post ... if Sir Henry Wood had accepted the Hallé offer ...

As things were, California’s loss was Manchester’s gain. And the task which awaited him back in England, of building a symphony orchestra from almost nothing – which laid the foundations for the Hallé story to the present day – was one for which he was prepared more, perhaps, than by any other experience, by his time in southern California.

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[1] Barbirolli, McGibbon and Kee, 1971

[2] Henry J Wood, Maker Of The Proms, Methuen,1994

[3] J O Northcutt in Magic Valley, The Story Of The Hollywood Bowl, Osherenko Publishing Co., Los Angeles, 1967

[4] I was able to show Cherkassky a copy of this letter, during one of his last public appearances, in Manchester, when in  his eighties, to his evident delight.