Pianist-Conductor

Most conductors know how to play some kind of musical instrument but few musicians are equally good at both playing and conducting. No exception was the late Ossip Gabrilowitsch. Though Detroiters remember him as the high-collared, fidgety conductor of their Detroit Symphony, the musical world remembers him primarily as one of the great pianists of his generation.

Born in Russia in 1878, Pianist Gabrilowitsch was a European celebrity at the age of 20. But his mature years as a concert artist were closely bound up with the U. S. From 1900 on he made some 25 U. S. concert tours. Eventually he made the U. S. his permanent home, became a U. S. citizen, married a U. S. woman, Clara Clemens, concert-singing daughter of Author Mark Twain.

This week, Clara Gabrilowitsch, who has already published an undistinguished biography of her illustrious father,* publishes an intimate biography of her famous husband. /- Anecdotal, chatty, her book, naturally uncritical, tells more about Mr. & Mrs. Gabrilowitsch than it does about Gabrilowitsch the musician. An ardent Christian Scientist (although her father was noted for his early attacks on Christian Science), Clara Gabrilowitsch interprets the events of her husband's life piously, describes how she several times brought him through crises of body and mind by the power of faith.

Gabrilowitsch himself she depicts as good-natured and talkative, a shrewd but generous man, a violent stickler over restaurant bills but an open-handed charitarian. When the U. S. entered the World War, he promptly arranged to give half his income to the Red Cross. Yet he was so enraged at being overcharged ten cents in a railroad diner that he spent days brooding and writing letters of protest to the company.

Though his frequent concert tours made his name well-known in the U. S., few ven today know how to pronounce it'.

Once on a Pullman sleeper an officious Dorter routed him out of his drawing-room 3erth in the middle of the night. "Dere's a lady out dere says she give me a quarter f you toll me how you pronounce your lame." Gabrilowitsch told him. The pro : Gabbril-oh'-vich.

* MY FATHER MARK TWAIN--Clara Clemens Harper, 1931 ($5).

/- HUSBAND GABRILOWITSCH-- Clara Clemens--Harper ($4).

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.