Circumstances rarely allow us to become very familiar with the personality of a foreign artist, in general or in its different aspects. Since Mr. Serge Koussevitzky, in organizing six concerts that form a homogenous whole, has given us the opportunity to do so, I will reserve for myself an article of synthesis at the end of this first series of concerts. These few lines are thus only a sort of preamble, in which there is joy and admiration, because they deal with a great artist.

As soon as Mr. Koussevitzky mounts the podium, one feels the influence of his authority, supported by a will that one senses as irreducible. The gesture is at first centered in on itself, as if to bring all the scattered forces towards a central point and form them into a tight bundle. It is evident that the artist is focusing and that he will seek to moderate his zeal, not only to carefully handle the effects of each work, but also in order to establish gradation in the concert as a whole.

The balance between conception and realization is evident and remains admirable. Even if the conception, which is always independent, may surprise, one feels that the artist does not believe in traditions, that he considers them to be inevitably altered just by the fact that they have been transmitted by many individuals of different races and tendencies, and thus he seeks the interpretation he finds the most logical, the most faithful, in relation to the idea that he has been able to make of the work, and not in relation to habit or convention. One must not object that the principle is dangerous, for it is obvious that if the artist who makes use of such freedom is truly an artist, he may not please everyone, for there is frequently fear of change, but he will not do anything that goes against the music; and if he is not a true artist, it does not matter, because whatever he does, everything will be and will remain dead, useless, and harmful.

For Serge Koussevitzky, as for the majority of Russians, music is mysticism.