Kirchner and Stravinsky

Monday night's concert was one of those rare events in which first class artists, with apparently sufficient rehearsal time, conspire to perform a program of substantial modern music that deserves their skills. Directed by Leon Kirchner, musicians from the Boston Symphony Orchestra and from Harvard gave the first Boston performance of Kirchner's Concerto for Violin, Cello, 10 Winds, and Percussion, and a concert reading of Stravinsky's ballet, Les Noces.

Kirchner's Concerto, commissioned by the Chamber Music Society of Baltimore and completed in 1960, is a vast rhapsody. Like a long cadenza, it exploits constant shifts of timbre, pace, and loudness. A recognizable motif stated at the beginning of the first of the two movements is repeated later by the French horn; aside from that recurrence, little apparent form but great passion animates the work.

The Concerto seems to savor each instant, in a continued series of "Now! Now! Now!" At times, striking combinations of timbres stand out: for example, the violin, the large gong, and an open, bottom C on the cello; or again the celeste, Violin, and the clarinet. At other times, the solo violin and cello luxuriate in close and shifting harmonies. Elsewhere, Kirchner indulges in bombastic percussion: a fast run in the clarinet or strings leads to a bang.

Unlike the only extant recording of the Concerto (also conducted by Kirchner), this performance did not obliterate practically everything but the solo violin and cello. Joseph Silverstein, violin, and Madeline Foley, cello, and the other instrumentalists, members of the Boston Symphony, sounded clearly and, thanks to Kirchner's careful direction, at the right times.

Kirchner really triumphed, however, in conducting Les Noces. In addition to a select chorus of Harvard and Radcliffe singers, he had an expert solo vocal quartet--Beverly Sills, Eunice Alberts, James Miller, and John--and an extraordinarily impressive team of pianists: Luise Vosgerchian, Laurence Berman, Ursula Oppens, and Geoffrey Hellman. Together, they solved the problems of Les Noces, which are primarily rhythmical.

Begun in 1915 and completed in 1923 for Diaghilev, Les Noces ends the series of "barbaric" ballets that includes L'Oiseau de Feu, Petrouchka, and Le Sacre du Printemps. Like the others, it embodies Russian folk spirit, according to Stravinsky. It is a setting of peasant remarks, mostly cliches, appropriate to a wedding: "Mother, brush my tresses"; "glory to the father, glory to the mother"; "to the wedding, to the wedding."

Someone--soloists or chorus-sings remarks such as these throughout; except for the coda, there is only one measure for orchestra alone. The melodies for these remarks are correspondingly simple. Most are derived by some obvious alteration from the three-note cluster with which the soprano begins the work. Harmonically, too, the whole structure is clear; the tonal center seems to move from E to C to A, then explode into B, move around to E, and then conclude on B.

The difficulty lies in maintaining the drive and forward push of the rhythms in the face of constantly shifting meters.. In overcoming that problem Kirchner and his company cooperated brilliantly.

One's only complaint could be that the singers' words could not be understood most of the time, even though they were English; unless one knew beforehand, it would have been hard to learn what was going on.

In addition to conducting his own Concerto and Les Noces, Kirchner performed with Luise Vosgerchian two Schubert compositions as entr'actes. Performed completely satisfactorily, these two works for four hands at the piano did serve usefully as comic relief. More familiar and predictable they could not have been.

The last concert in Cambridge to match this one in quality of intent and execution was given last spring; the program of music by Pierre Boulez. Like that one, this was sponsored by the Department of Music, one suspects, gratefully, under the goad of Leon Kirchner. There is no telling what will happen to musicologists if they leave the door open to superior applied music--the kind one can actually hear. But on the basis of Monday's more than welcome concert, one can assure the Department there is a mob at the door waiting to listen. Concerts such as Monday's are more than welcome.