Royal Johnson might have been the cleverest man alive. Indeed, he kept his colleagues in the Chicago Symphony Orchestra in stitches. Johnson served as a violinist with the CSO from 1938 to 1978.
Like many orchestral musicians of long-standing, the sheer volume of sound surrounding him took a toll on his hearing. The string player wore a hearing aid and joked about the irony of being a symphonic musician with auditory limitations.
One day, during a rehearsal in which the violinist wasn’t required to play, he sat in the auditorium to listen. The conductor was having trouble producing the balance he desired among the instruments and wondered how the troupe sounded in the hall itself.
Seeing Johnson several rows behind him, he shouted, “How does it sound?”
The replay came: “I can’t tell you how it sounds, but it looks great!” This story continues to be told by Chicago Symphony musicians who never met him, now over 45 years after Royal retired.
On one of the CSO’s tours to Europe, a group of his colleagues had occasion to play the Bruckner String Quintet. Johnson attended and congratulated his colleagues. He watched as the ensemble stood under a portrait of the composer for a group photo.
Bruckner remains a hard sell for some, and Royal didn’t appreciate his music. Looking up at the image of the composer on the wall behind his friends, he could only comment, “You know, he doesn’t even look sorry!”
The Chicago Symphony, like most fine orchestras, maintains a high standard of performance whether or not they encounter a maestro who is a master. Despite their best efforts, not all the resulting performances are up to their lofty expectations. Johnson is thought to have coined a phrase that captures the band’s sentiment as they walk off stage on those occasions:
“We would have played better, but he wouldn’t let us.”
According to the principal horn, Phil Farkas:
In a two-hour rehearsal he pulled us apart and put us together again … and in the course of doing it actually fired one of the men. He said, ‘I don’t accept that kind of playing in my orchestra.’
We thought, ‘Gee, you haven’t even got the orchestra yet, it’s only an hour or so.’ But it was his orchestra, he had a contract to prove it. Anyhow, he took us apart and we needed it, we all knew that. And when he put it back together and we went straight through Ein Heldenleben (by Richard Strauss) the last hour of rehearsal, it was a revelation. …
But, as I say, he was rough. He spared no mercy on us at all. As he went out the door after the rehearsal, he was the only calm one. The rest of us were ringing wet. As he went out the door, one of our wags in the orchestra, Royal Johnson, said, ‘Well, not much of a conductor, but an awfully nice fellow!'”*
Ahead of another rehearsal not long after, the Symphony was waiting for Reiner’s arrival. Johnson sat in a chair on the aisle leading from the stage door to the rostrum.
When Reiner entered, he got up and tiptoed behind him, peering over his shoulder. The violinist recognized a surgical scar on the back of his neck, something other musicians had already noted. Johnson retreated to his seat before the maestro reached the platform.
Royal turned to his stand-mate. “You know, that’s not his original head!”
But lest you think all CSO stories involve Royal J., here is an anecdote involving George Sopkin, the founding cellist of the Fine Arts String Quartet, and himself a CSO member from 1935 to 1942. Upon the 18-year-old’s arrival for his audition, the Music Director Frederick Stock, asked, “So we’re taking Boy Scouts now?” No matter his youth, George got the job.
This was an era of once legendary instrumentalists, some of whom are all but forgotten. Raya Garbousova, the cellist-dedicatee of Samuel Barber’s Cello Concerto, appeared as a featured soloist at Orchestra Hall more than once. Garbousova was a fabulous artist and a woman of striking loveliness. One might say movie star-beautiful.
Stock, approaching 70, admired her in every regard, including the latter. At a quiet moment during the rehearsal, the Music Director smiled as he leaned toward Sopkin in the cello section and whispered, “Ah, to be that cello!”
Such was life within a group of almost all-male orchestral forces at that time.
Stock died later in the year Sopkin departed to become a full-time chamber musician. The cellist felt a fatherly connection to the man who had hired him to be a member of the CSO as a teenager.
A child was born to the Sopkins on October 20, 1942, the day of the conductor’s death. The couple called her Frederica.
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The first photo is of Fritz Reiner. The second is Frederick Stock. Next comes a caricature of Reiner by John Jensen, with his permission. It is followed by a picture of Raya Garbousova. Finally, the Fine Arts String Quartet, from left to right: Leonard Sorkin, Abram Loft, George Sopkin, and Gerald Stanick.
*Hillyer, The Podium, 3, 1979, 22.
