HOLLYWOOD BOWL.

Thames Star, Volume LIX, Issue 16627, 24 October 1925, Page 9

HOLLYWOOD BOWL.

IN CALIFORNIA. WONDERFUL NIGHTS. America perhaps more than any other country in the world has the power oi presenting you with the unexpected, writes 13. J. Evans in the Manchester Guardian. Thus in South California, a few hundred yards from whore the Babbit .Realtors have built he ugliest seaside resorts imaginable, Katherine Tingley lias erected a Greek thcatre-witn the blue Pacific as its background, a structure and a setting which would seem proper in one ol tiie old noble civilisations. So it is with Hollywood. In this cysical, vulgar home of the world’s most demo era tic art there exists the Hollywood Bowl, where music can be heard under conditions, which, 1 believe, must be quite unparalleled. The fact that Sit Henry Wood has seen it woith while to come all the way to California to conduct lour concerts in the Bowl and then go away again without doing anything else, in America may make one realise the musical attraction ot tins institution.

The Hoiiyvoud Bowl itself js a natural canyon .sheltered oit all sides Dy hills and used in the more unsettled ua.vs of American history as a resting place and refuge by settlers and Indians and outlaws. Ihe Christian coin inunities in Los Angeles first realised the possibilities of the Bowl as a gathering place, and since the war immense Easter services have been held in the canyon. From this came the idea that rough wooden benches might be built around the canyon to till its entire depth, and that the vast outdoor auditorium thus obtained might be used on summer nights for popular audiences who wished to hear orchestral music. 1 saw the Bowl on the night of the first concert of this summer season. The crowd on that summer night I can best describe by saying that it resembled in size though in no other quality the crowd at a Football Cup dinal. Over twenty thousand people came .out of Hollywood and Los Angeles. Special tram services were run .to carry .them, while around the canyon there was parking for thousands of cars. The Bowl itself was lit with enormous arc-liglits until the music began, when, suddenly everything was extinguished except the lights on the pillared -stage at the bottom of the canyon, where, in a little jumble of black and white, the orchestra was sitting. On that first night Fritt Reiner was the conductor, and that audience of twenty housand peoplo was held .in absolue silence while his orchestra played such pieces as Richard Strauu’s ‘‘Don Juan,’’ the Hungarian Rhapsody No. 2 of Liszt, and Tschaikovsky’s Symphony No. 5 in E minor. It was after liszt’s Rhapsody that a German lady who sat near me, a recent immigrant. one would imagine, made gutteral noises of joy and said: “Ah, but isn’t it wonderful'? .[ had not expected this. America is a great country.” Whatever one might think of the crudity of so- much in American life one had to concede that here” was;sometliing heroic in the popularisation of the arts. America is capable of all things, and here she lias achieved something supremely worth doing v Music in this Hollywood Bowl is, without exaggeration, different from music anywhere else in the world. In the first place, the conditions are different. You can sit in the warm Californian night and listen to music under the stars until the moon comes up and yu may be sure that it will never grow cold and that it will never rain. Usually outdoor music means music which lias lost by wind or weather its finer shades and tones, but the amazing thing about the Hollywood Bowl is that its acoustics are perfect, that the most delicate meaning of the quietest moments can be followed. From the top of the Bowl, far, far away from the orchestra, I could follow every movement in “Don Juan,” even those whispering, exhausted sounds in which Strauss describes the end if Don Juan’s storm of love. Apart from these qualities the Bowl possesses by its very magnitude and by the absence of vibrations, which are so often troublesome in closed-in buildings, a power of making music liquid. Every sound in the orchestra seems to blend into one inevitable sound which flow's smoothly and without effort throughout the canyon. So pure are the tones that one could almost imagine discord to he impossible.

The Hollywood Bowl is a democratic institution. You pay '‘a quarter” (21 cents) for the right to sit yourself on any part of the ivooden benches which you may be early enough to obtain. Even if you are too late for any wooden bench at all, you can sit, high up on the hillside ,and be sure of hearing everything perfectly. The whole concert, then ,you obtain at a price of just over a shilling but which in tho mental values of tho American people is worth certainly not more than sixpence. After each piece has been played the arc-lights are lit again and enormous searchlights, red, blue and violet, are played upon the crowd. Somewhere in the middle of the programme you will probably have to endure an “uplift.” talk; how good music is, how democratising, how good for the soul and for America. It would be a ludicrous anti-climax if one did not remember that these “uplift” speakers are those who have made these summer Bowl concerts possible. And, like Bernard Shaw, they believe, when it comes to music, in levelling up and not down, in order to make concessions to popular taste. I have not written these impressions to suggest that the method of the Hollywood Bowl should lie follwed m England. God did not give Manchester Californian sun or Californian summer nights. Bightlv we follow other ways. But the greatest temple in the world to the popularisation of good music is probably the Hollywod Bowl, and for that reason alone it seems fitting that Sir Henry Wood should be asked to conduct four concerts there during this present summer season.