I cannot pass over in silence an event in this London visit which caused me a good deal of distress. Koussevitsky was giving a concert, and asked me to entrust him with the first performance of my ‘Symphonies d’Instruments à Vent à la Mémoire de Debussy’. I did not, and indeed I could not, count on any immediate success for this work. It is devoid of all the elements which infallibly appeal to the ordinary listener and to which he is accustomed. It would be futile to look in it for any passionate impulse or dynamic brilliance. It is an austere ritual which is unfolded in terms of short litanies between different groups of homogeneous instruments. / I fully anticipated that the 'cantilène' of clarinets and flutes, frequently taking up again their liturgical dialogue and softly chanting it, did not offer sufficient attraction to a public which had so recently shown me their enthusiasm for the “revolutionary” 'Sacre du Printemps'. This music is not meant “to please” an audience or to rouse its passions. I had hoped, however, that it would appeal to those in whom a purely musical receptivity outweighed the desire to satisfy emotional cravings. Alas! The conditions under which the work was given in an ill-chosen sequence. This music, composed for a score of wind instruments, an ensemble to which people were not accustomed at that time and whose timbre was found to seem rather disappointing, was placed immediately after the pompous marches of the ‘Coq d’Or’, with their well-known orchestral brilliancy. And this is what happened: as soon as the marches were finished, three-quarters of the instrumentalists left their sears, and in the vast arena of Queen’s Hall I saw my twenty musicians still in their places at the back of the platform at an enormous distance from the conductor. The sight was peculiar in itself. To see a conductor gesticulating in front of an empty space, with all the more effort because the players were so far away, was somewhat disturbing. To conduct or control a group of instrumentalists at such a distance is an exceedingly arduous task. It was particularly arduous on this occasion, as the character of my music demanded the most delicate care to attain the ear of the public and to tame the audience to it. Both my work and Koussevitsky himself were thus victimized by untoward circumstances in which no conductor in the world could have made good. << less