A Nice Gershwin Tune

New England born composer LEONARD BERNSTEIN is now on a spring visit to Italy, where he is conductor in residence at the Teatro alla Scala in Milan, and where he will conduct the May Festival in Florence. Shortly before his departure, he had completed the score for a musical version of Voltaire’s Candide with a book by Lillian Hellman, which is scheduled for production in the fall.

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by LEONARD BERNSTEIN

THROUGH the windows of the English Grill in Radio City we can see the ice skaters milling about on the rink, inexplicably avoiding collision with one another. One cannot look at them for more than a few seconds, so dazzling are they as they whirl and plummet in the white winter sunlight.

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The shirred eggs are gone from our plates, and the second cup of coffee offers the momentary escape from the necessity of conversation. My lunch date with PM is one of those acid-forming events born of the New York compulsion to have lunch with one’s business associates, at all costs, “sometime,” as if the mere act of eating together for ninety minutes were guaranteed to cement any and all relations, however tenuous.