The Music Box

The regular Cambridge concert of the Boston Symphony Orchestra was the occasion for the debut of Mr. Walter Piston as composer and conductor. Mr. Piston's Concerto for orchestra has obviously been inspired by the Brandenburg concerti of Bach for its general form of using the various choirs of the orchestra as collective soloists in the contrapuntal development of several themes. The opening theme is indeed very similar to that of the third Brandenburg. The harmonic development seems always to begin with the more orthodox manner and to court the modern idiom for complexity, at the same time employing modern modes of orchestration with the usual tinklings and thumpings of percussion. The movement opens with an adagio scored for the brasses and flows into a passacaglian allegro which alone seems really successful. The composer seems to attempt a harmonious union of classical convention and contemporary complexity, but the piece at hand seemed to suffer from lack of the essential unconscious drive behind all its consciousness to put over what it has to say.

Miss Shirley Bagley, the Mason and Hamlin prize winner, played the First Piano Concerto of Beethoven. In a white lace gown with red trimmings Miss Bagley played with clarity and ease and also one eye on Herr Doctor Koussevitzky. It is of course early Beethoven but there is more virile stuff here than the reading of last evening ever allowed us to imagine; after all, it was written in the period of the Pathetique Sonata. And for the Sibelius' Second Symphony the writer has nothing but admiration for this full-blooded expression of lyric and dramatic poetry of music. There are passages which are peculiarly reminiscent of Tschaikowski but Sibelius always twists such leanings into sterner stuff. It is almost a double pleasure to hear this music after the frivolous and pretentious symphonies that we have listened to in the past months.

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The Stradivarius Quartet return to Cambridge today after an unexpected long interval because M. Pochon has been suffering from a bad wrist. They will play in the Fogg Art Museum at eight o'clock the following programme: Mozart's Quartet in E flat major, Kochel No. 428; La Oracion del Torero by Joaquin Turina; a Scherzo of Glazounow; and the Beethoven Quartet, Opus 59 No. 1.

The radio permits us to hear three unusually distinctive symphony concerts this week-end. Stokowski and the Philadelphia Orchestra will broadcast this afternoon from 2.30 P.M. to 4 P.M. over WABC a wholesome programme of Beethoven and Bach: the Leonore Overture No. 3 and the violin concerto in D major with Yehudi Menuhin as soloist, and then the Fugue in G minor, Prelude in E flat minor, and the Brandenburg Concerto No. 2 in F. On Saturday evening at 8.15 P.M. over WEAF the Boston Symphony Orchestra, assisted by Jesus Maria Sanroma, will play the Mozart Symphony in E flat major; Professor Edward Burlingame Hill's Concertino for the piano and orchestra; the Prelude to the oratorio "Gerontius" by Sir Edward Elgar in memory of the composer who died last week; and Debussy's fascinating La Mer instead of the new symphony by one Gilere. Toscanini will conclude the Beethoven cycle in New York on Sunday afternoon with the Missa Solemnis, one opus of Beethoven that we do not hear very offen. Also "Pagliacci" and Strauss "Salome" will be broadcast from the Metropolitan Opera House at 1.55 P.M. Saturday afternoon.