 The CBS Radio Workshop, dedicated to man's imagination, the theater of the mind. Tonight, a pre-release performance of Hugo Weisskahl's The Stronger, a recorded one-act, one-voice opera chosen by the American Chamber Music Committee to be given a major performance on record as part of the Columbia Modern American Composer Series. Serving on the American Chamber Music Committee are Virgil Thompson, composer and critic as chairman, Aaron Copeland, composer and chairman of the faculty of the Berkshire Music Center, Henry Cowell, composer and professor of composition, Peabody Institute of Music, Baltimore, Maryland, William Shuman, president of Juilliard School of Music, and Goddard Liebersen, president of Columbia Records. Here is Mr. Liebersen. When the Committee for the Modern American Music Series, which included the speaker, first heard a test record that was submitted of a chamber opera by a composer named Hugo Weisskahl, we were all struck by what seemed to us to be the emergence of a genuine American opera composer, a composer who seemed to have grasped not only the elements of his work as a musician, but also those important elements that make up that rare being a genuine theatrical composer. The stronger small opera based on a play by Strinberg is perhaps not immediately accessible in its full values, but what is immediately accessible is the dramatic impact. I think that perhaps as far as the music is concerned, the best thing I can do is quote from the notes that Mr. George Rochberg has supplied for this record. He says, in general, it is difficult to place Weisskahl's musical style, not that it is important or necessary to do so. We are too fond of labeling composers today. Still, his music leans heavily in the direction of a freely handled chromatic palette, without ever sounding like so-called atonal music. The diversity of harmonic palette is evident in the stronger, as is the composer's sensitivity to orchestral color. The most important thing is, of course, that these means are not to be judged by themselves, but entirely in relation to the dramatic situation to which they are applied and which they delineate so beautifully. And now Hugo Weisskahl's The Stronger, sung by Adelaide Bishop and conducted by Alfredo Antonini. You have been listening to the CBS Radio Workshop premiere performance of The Stronger, a recorded opera based on a play by August Strinberg, adapted by Richard Hart with music by Hugo Weisskahl, sung by Adelaide Bishop and conducted by Alfredo Antonini. The Columbia recording of The Stronger will be available at music stores next week. This is Roger Foster inviting you to join us next week when from Hollywood we will present Hamlet Revisited, another point of view about Shakespeare's great heroic figure. The CBS Radio Workshop is produced in New York by Paul Roberts. In the current issue of TV Radio Mirror Magazine is an interesting article on Who's Who on CBS Radio Workshop. TV Radio Mirror is now on sale at all news stands. Stay tuned for five minutes of CBS News to be followed on most of these stations by My Son Jeep. This is the CBS Radio Network.