Modern Music

Debussy turned out to be the old fogy at the concert that took place in Sanders Theatre on Monday evening before an audience of about 350 persons. Sponsored by the Summer School, a program mainly devoted to early 20th-century works was performed by soprano Dorothy Crawford and pianists Bruce Archibald and John Crawford.

As is common at concerts of contemporary music, the performances were often a good deal better than the works peformed, although every composer on the roster was a "big name." Still, half the program offered music of high quality.

Mrs. Crawford sang a half dozen Hungarian folk-songs in the richly colored arrangements made by Bartok in 1929. Most of these were melancholy in subject and in treatment; and she captured their moods admirably. She did a group of five Webern songs, dating from 1909-1917. Webern had not yet evolved the highly atomized style that has, for good or (probably) bad, made him the No.1 idol of the young fry among today's composers. With the exception of the moving "Kahl reckt der Baum" (to words of Stephan George), these songs did not seem worth writing down, to say nothing of committing to memory.

The final songs were the six Ariettes oubliees that Debussy composed to evocative poems of Verlaine in 1888. Though youthful works, which were radically avant-garde in their day, they proved that Debussy was already a master Impressionist. "II pleure dans mon coeur" remains one of the most exquisite gems in the whole song literature.

Mrs. Crawford was in especially good voice on this occasion. Her voice is not large, but it is appealing in quality--and particularly well suited to the Debussy peces. She spun some beautiful pianissimo tones in the upper middle range. Her only weakness is in notes above high G-sharp, which tend to come out either edgy or breathy. In all the songs John Crawford, her husband, provided exemplary accompaniments.

The remaining items on the program were three works for solo piano, played by Bruce Archibald. Schoenberg's Six Short Piano Pieces, Opus 19 (1911), come from a period when the composed was tired of post-Romanticism but had not yet concretized his twelve-tone technique. After close acquaintance, they still impressed me as no more than undergraduate improvisation despite Archibald's careful rendition.

The Serenade en la (1925) is not Stravinsky at his best. It has a number of very haunting places; but there are some dull stretches that the proper self-criticism would have eliminated or rewritten. Archibald gave its four movements a clear and clean performance, with very little pedal.

Copland's Piano Variations (1930) constitute a landmark in the output of our country's foremost composer. In fact, the work is a milestone in the whole course of 20th-century pianism (some would say "millstone," and it drove two ladies in the front row to a hasty retreat). It is admittedly repellent on first hearing; and I subjected myself to it only in fits of masochism for several years before I began to fathom its great stature. Its granitic, clangorous, uncompromising dissonances take getting used to; but the piece is more than worth the effort.

Archibald took several sections considerably faster than Copland himself used to, and in the process introduced quite a few wrong notes. But his over-all concept of the work's structure and impetus yielded a more unified result than when the composer played it. This is achievement enough for a young pianist.