Notes on Recent Concerts

With avalanche of musical activities in past week and a half, many overlapping like a fugal stretto, reviewer put in somewhat same position as the Japanese poet given task of composing a seventeen-syllable poem dealing with all of the Eight Views of Omi.

Fresh from triumph as concerto soloist with the Pierian, sophomore David Hurwitz gave sonata recital on May 11 in Adams Dining Hall. Topnotch violin playing in solid Hindemith and Beethoven works, despite an occasional uneven bowing. Intonation accurate, tone never forced. Molds beautiful lines with much care; has great insight into phrasing of the music. A real musician's violinist in the best Mischa Elman tradition. For my money, the finest undergraduate violinist here in at least ten years; has the stuff of which great fiddlers are made. Jonathan Thackeray his partner at the piano. Formidable technique, but tended to play too loud. Main trouble: his playing lacked poetry--fatal for his solo number, the Chopin F-Minor Ballade.

Sonorous Sundays...

Haydn's masterly "Lord Nelson Mass" presented in Memorial Church on May 13 by Harvard and Radcliffe freshman choruses. Titled by Haydn a Mass in D-Minor, it is nevertheless drawn more often than not, like Bach's B-Minor Mass, into the happy and festive key of D-Major. Performance enormously impressive. First two parts conducted by Cornelia Davenport, last three by Allan Miller. Choristers obviously very carefully rehearsed; tone lacked full-bodied resonance, but mustn't expect from them the quality of Mr. Woodworth's varsity singers. Vocal soloists adequate for the most part. No small amount of the overall impressiveness due to the marvelous parts for trumpets and timpani-now menacing, now jubilant. James Armstrong at the organ a most effective substitute for string orchestra.

By sprinting to Eliot Dining Hall, missed only first three or four minutes of the Mozart anniversary concert. All but one of the works paled beside the Haydn Mass, but worth hearing anyway. Fleet performances by Laurence Berman and Richard Friedberg of two four-hand piano works, almost as much fun to listen to as to play. Group of pieces by vocal nonet: opening canon pretty insecure, but singers got better as they went along, and the motet Ave Verum came off very well. The celebrated "Dissonant" Quartet suffered at the hands of the Cambridge Quartet from raggedness and faulty violin intonation. If only all the players had been up to 'cellist Charles Forbes! The group has done much better in the past. Sarah-Jane Smith the concert's featured soloist, singing four works in four languages. Well-trained and agile voice, but tone tended to be too breathy. Most noteworthy was Ch'io mi scordi te?, one of those demanding "concert arias" that are in effect extensive, multisectional operatic scenes for one person.

Tuesday's second Yard concert, by the freshman and varsity glee clubs, separately and together, fared better than the first, partly owing to the lack of a disrupting wind. Kirkland House's fine opera productions were reviewed in these columns by one of my colleagues, as will be the second varied Composers Lab program of last Thursday.

Concert of three of the most meaty and grand violin-and-piano sonatas in Paine Hall Friday: the Brahms A-Major, Prokofiev D-Major, and Bee-thoven C-Minor. More laurels to Dunster pianist Robert Freeman for the impeccable and consistently compelling performance that we have come to expect of him. Violinist David Spencer, a Wesleyan junior, left much to be desired. His playing lacked tension, was matter-of-fact and on the surface, and at times harsh and out of tune. He is definitely no Heifetz or Hurwitz.

...Make Days of Little Rest

Organ recital given Sunday afternoon in Memorial Church by seven Harvard, Wellesley and Radcliffe students. General level of performance surprisingly high. Best playing done by James Armstrong (Mendelssohn's Second Sonata) and Kerala Johnson (the long-winded B-Minor Choral of Franck). The others need to work for greater rhythmic precision and vitality, and for clearer articulation.

Dashed from Church to Adams Common Room and caught last half of House's chamber music concert. The novelty on the program was Wenzel Matiegka's charming if uninspired trio for flute, viola and guitar, with 'cello part added by Schubert; ensemble a bit ragged, but guitarist Richard Zaffron contributed delightfully quaint twanging and strumming. Flutist Karl Kraber ended concert by deftly tossing off virtuoso solo part in Telemann's sturdy A-Minor suite for flute, strings and continuo.

Soprano Elizabeth Kalkhurst and tenor Malcolm Ticknor gave program in Lowell Common Room Sunday evening of art songs and operatic excerpts ranging from Elizabethan period to the present. Ticknor has luscious G-G octave, which he handles expertly, but lower notes as yet weak and unfocused. Soprano not up to her usual standard. Her best singing was fittingly in the premiere of the "Glamis thou art" aria from a new opera Macbeth by Edward Goldman, who was present; an aptly melodramatic setting, with particularly effective use of low notes. Singers joined at end for pair of the too rarely heard Schumann duets and a scene from Carmen. Laurence Berman the able accompanist on an out-of-tune piano.

Final Yard concert by Glee Club this evening. Et tenet nostras numerosus Apollo aures.