He Mixes Pops With Classics

Press, Volume CIV, Issue 30939, 21 December 1965, Page 8

He Mixes Pops With Classics

Next February this whitemaned man on the podium will raise his baton In the Civic Theatre and the N.Z.B.C. Symphony Orchestra will play tunes from “My Fair Lady.” Arthur Fiedler, conductor of the Boston Pops, will be in town for the 1966 Proms, taking the orchestra through a programme “as mixed as a salad” of music by classical and popular composers. Seventy-one this month, Arthur Fielder is described as up-to-the-minute as the next 60 seconds. His Boston Pops concert encores often contain tunes fresh from the hit parades, for through the

36 ydbra be has been conductinc the Pops the conductor bM kept an ear dttuned to all the poesitriiiti :? of Mending the dasstad, the popular and the fleeting to bring muric to the level of the “average guy.” AT TABLES The Pope la the annual naneweek spring season at Boston’s Symphony HaN, when 97 members of the Boston Symphony Orchestra piny an informal concert white the audience sits at tabtas and eats sandwicbes and drinks coffee, light vrines and beer to the muric.

Arthur Fiedler also founded the free, openwir conceits on the Charies Rtver esplanade in 1929, and these have been attended by Bostonians in tens of thousands at a time. The Pope concerts are as had to get into as “My Fair Lady” or “Hello, Dotty!” on Broadway. The programmes include folk songs, ballet music, overtures and marches, and have brought popu

ter American composers such as Loewe, and Sherman (‘•Mary Poppins”) to the symphonic orchestra repertoire. The 1966 Proms will have a similar mixed character, with items by Beethoven, Bertioz and Brahms sharing programmes with “Colonel Bogey,” “Camelot” and the theme from “Lawrence of Arabia.” MORE EXCITING Arthur Fiedler was born in Boston, where his father was first violinist of the Boston Symphony, and learned to play the violin and piano, but as he grew older he decided conducting was more exciting. He studied conducting at the Royal Academy in Berlin until “the smell of war in the air” made him return to the United States.

When World War I broke out he was drafted into the Army but after a few days he was out because of flat feet. He got a job with a hotel orchestra until the symphony hired him to replace a European stranded by the war.

Fiedler retained his interest in conducting and in 1924 organised a chamber group made up of symphony players, called the Boston Sinfonietta. Five years later he founded the open-air concerts and in 1930' he became the Pops conductor.

He has since conducted orchestras in every American State but one in eight tours of the country and has made special appearances in some two dozen foreign countries. He has collected honorary degrees, honorary fire chief badges as an avowed “spot,” a wife, two daughters and a son.