NEW YORK SKYLINES.

Auckland Star, Volume LXI, Issue 262, 5 November 1930, Page 17

NEW YORK SKYLINES.

RACHMANINOFF'S "HOLD OUT."

THE SERPENT IN EDEN.

UNINVITED GUESTS,

(By a Special Correspondent.) NEW YORK, September 13. Sergei Waeeileivich Rachmaninoff, Russian composer, conductor and pianifit, is ranked with Padereweki and Kreieler as one of "the biggest hold-outs on air performance." In short, he ie not yet converted to radio, although the National Broadcasting Company is said to be negotiating with that veteran pianist, Paderewski, for radio playing on his American tour this .fall. The money ie reported to be £5000 for one performance, and that would be a record. Rachmaninoff, living here quietly since 1917, hae the reserve and conservatism of an old-line Russian. Aside from hia conservatism, he may disdain radio because he kndws that he would be*called upon for his celebrated prelude in C sharp minor. He wrote that when he was '20 and nothing else that he hae composed has become known so widely, although he has to hie credit operas, symphonies and many excellent pieces for-the piano. "A pleasant little, piece"; is all that he will say for the prelude that young aspirants have> played in a thousand American homes. , , ' Like other Russian aristocrats, Rachmaninoff found hia beloved Russia uncomfortable at the time of the revolution and therefore he. came here. He plays too seldom for devotees of music, who regard him with awe as one of the vaster figures of the keyboard. With sombre dignity he broods over his •■ iiK strument in a sphinxlike: manner and with giant hands ajid a - tremendous wrist brings out music that is virile and profound. Kichman Would Get Richer. It'e said to be the ambition bf Harry Richman,.whose night club.reopens in October'with speciality acts from' current musical comedies, to make a profit on every customer equal to the six dollars a week he got for playing the piano at Chester Park, a Cincinnati amusement resort, when he. eleven years old. That sounds easy. Richman, when he was a boy and played the piano for relatives on Sundays, expected to become an electrical engineer, but' never expected to use ae much "electric light as he does in his oiub and around his Long Island house which, is drenched with spotlights all night long.: ■ ■ i \ He uses pine needles in his bath, must sleep-in a double bed, has his initials tattooed on his left arm, keeps tainned by a eunray lamp and has on the library table a red .leather book, with the title, "A Love Affair," on, the outside in gold letters. When a caller opens it an imitation snake jumps up at him. Gus jWade. of Carnegie Hall. ; , Gus Wade, has a tmgle he blew> in town and country, all over this broad tondwhen-he was a circus advance; agent and wore a blue and gold uniform and a white helmet with- a yellow plume, and rode a horse wherever he went. He also 'has a medal, with-a picture' of the Sphinx on one side, that says he was a bugler-sergeant in Egypt with the Grenadier Suaids.

A third medal, that will be admired when the Carnegie Hall season opens soon, lias a picture of Arfcuro Toscannani, mightiest of orchestral conductors, on one side, and it says that Mr. Wade made the recent European tour with the Philharmonic symphony Orchestra. (Jus helped handle baggage. "Hello, Carnegie was the greeting of Leopold Stokowski, Philadelphia orchestral conductor, when he eaw> Mr. Wade in Berlin. Thirty-five years has Mr. Wade, now 75, teen stage doorman, at Carnegie Hall, and this tour took him back to England, his native land, for the first time in 45 years, One Use for Cats. It is the custom to speak disparagingly of New York's street cats, and to call them useless. 'The' skyliner, however, has long felt that in an ornamental way they fit in nicely with the garbage cans and the elevated structures, and now comes a neat etory of how they have been used for purpbseso'ffeVenge.' Upon learning that an apartment house Trag, • who - plagued ■■ other' tenants by imitating the mailman's voice and whistle, waa giving a. dinner party, a certain gentleman of imagination gathered in a score of stray cats and sneaked them into the cellar. Hβ then crowded them all into the dumb waiter and proceeded to ease away on the rope until it came even with the enemy's apartment. He rang the dumb waiter bell, the door was opened, and out into the middle of the dinner party piled the fearful assemblage of cats. Earless, mangy, cockeyed and generally of forlorn appearance, i they scattered, as cats will when not at ease, under the furniture. Meanwhile the. gentleman of imagination was waiting out in the hall and presently, when the door opened, and wjth muttered imprecations, the cats were chased out, his satisfaction was profound. Red Light Beggars. Red lights flash and traffic etops on Lafayette Street near the long line of men waiting outside the city's Free Employment Agency. Up to one luxurious car containing several persons steps a shabby, tired-looking man. "Will you give me a nickel for a cup of coffee?" he says. . Hβ is not from the line of job seekers. He is a professional beggar with a gift for psychology. Often the occupants of the car dig into their, pockets and provide him with enough money for a week's coffee, if that is what he wants. Occasionally the more sophisticated, who have gone that way before, turn Mm down. When turned down, the beggar becomes surly, says that he ie an old American soldier, and suggests that people who ride in elegant cars should be able to spare a nickel or two. He also glances suggestively toward the line of unemployed. The persons in the car, held fast by traffic rules, of course are helpless until the lights change. It's a clever racket.