Music News and Reviews in the Sunday Herald Tribune

Virgil Thomson, whose review of Saturday's performance of the Boston Symphony at Carnegie Hall ran this day in the main news section, devoted his Sunday column to his field trip to Pittsburgh where he caught the city's symphony orchestra under the direction of conductor Fritz Reiner. Thomson was a fan of Reiner although he did not think highly of the acoustics at the Syria Mosque where the orchestra performed. “We do not often hear in Carnegie Hall a program so fresh, so light of texture, so still alive,” he wrote. Reiner was notoriously dictatorial. He fired 90 percent of the musicians when he took over the Pittsburgh Symphony but turned a minor institution into a major musical presence, known particularly for its performance of new music. He later led the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. Thomson also praised a concert of sonatas at Carnegie Institute, but found the local opera company's performance of “La Boheme” wanting.

Jerome D. Boehm reviewed recent classical recordings including Dorothy Maynor's “Sacred Songs.” He wrote that “the defects of production” which were frequently mentioned by critics “when the Negro soprano is heard in the concert hall are obliterated here and her tones emerge with sensuously shimmering purity.” Maynor often appeared in recitals and as a soloist with symphony orchestras as well as on radio although the color bar of this time kept her off the stages of the major opera houses. Some critics faulted her vocal technique (or "production") attributing it to lack of proper training and predicted, incorrectly as it turned out, that her voice would give out eventually.

Boehm also reviewed a single disk (albums at this time were in multiple disks) from Metropolitan Opera star Rose Bampton in which she sang an aria from “Fidelio” accompanied by the NBC Symphony Orchestra under the direction of Arturo Toscanini. While he praised the performance he found it unfortunate that the second side suffered from a smaller sound volume than the first, making it fall short on dramatic impact. He found Rise Steven's performance in selections from “Carmen” on another single disk “uneven” and found fault with Raoul Jobin on this recording as well. He praised Licia Albanese's recording of “Vissi d'Arte” and “O mio babbino caro” as “admirable.” In his review of these and other recordings of the week, he paid attention to the mechanical quality of the recordings themselves as well as to the performances.

The newspaper ran a list of the the musical selections that were being presented in the city's concert halls and auditoriums that week. Like The Sunday Times it also carried numerous concert ads.