The Two Faces of Janos

CELLIST JANOS STARKER plays with superlative technique: his fingers range the cello fingerboard unerringly while his bow arm sails from one string to another, never straying or accenting incorrectly. But the highlight of Starker's appearance with the Harvard-Radcliffe Orchestra Friday night, the Dvorak cello concerto in B minor, demands not only precision but also sensitivity, which the world-renowned cellist was either unwilling or unable to furnish.

HRO is not the best symphony in the world, and no one expects it to be. But this does not excuse their frequent drowning out of Starker. The acoustics of Sanders Theater leave much to be desired, but HRO is no newcomer to Mem Hall. Conductor James Yannatos was lax in regulating the orchestra's volume.

Yannatos showed further short-sightedness when he rotated the instrumentalists within his wind section--an extraordinary policy which resulted in a superb flute performance in Stravinsky's Petrushka and then abysmal, brittle, out-of-tune music from the flutes and oboes in the Dvorak. The sloppy wind performance in the cello concerto obscured a strong effort by the strings to match at least partially the virtuosity of Starker.

However, the worst offender of the night was neither Starker nor the HRO, but a Sanders Theater radiator which released a cacophonous blast of steam during the contemplative, yet simple adagio ma non troppo of the Dvorak. As the heating unit entered the final stage of its five-minute protest, Starker remarked, "Seldom have I been so rudely interrupted. Perhaps this indicates that Harvard needs a concert hall." That conclusion is indisputable, in light of the radiator interruption and the police sirens and car horns which consistently violated passages played at or below the mezzo-piano level.

Oddly enough, after the radiator was silenced, Starker at last began to play with the feeling that had been absent before the delay. The orchestra seemed ragged after the discouraging episode, but Starker opened up, singing his notes instead of merely stating them with technical flawlessness. In the final moments of the third movement rondo, Starker gave the audience what it had been waiting for all night.

THE EVENING OPENED with Morgenmusik by Hindemith, an ensemble for two trumpets and two trombones first performed on a tower the morning of a German music festival. To duplicate the original effect the four instrumentalists performed the short piece of three movements in the gallery above the Sanders stage, with the orchestra and audience straining to watch. Blending might have been difficult, because of the extraordinary distance between the trumpets and trombones, but the four soloists maintained good ensemble, although they had some problems with intonation and rhythm.

By the end of the Hindemith, the audience had stopped rattling their programs and was ready for Starker. But he was not ready for them. He performed the first movement of Vivaldi's concerto in D major for cello--a violin concerto rescored for cello--as though his appearance were just another night shift on the assembly line. He payed little attention to the orchestra, which had difficulty adjusting to the soloist's rhythm. In the second movement, Starker finally shed his coldness, swaying his body to listen to the concertmaster and moving his eyebrows as he explored the beauty of Vivaldi's larghetto. In the final movement Starker relapsed, although he played with more feeling than he had in the first movement.

BEFORE THE INTERMISSION, HRO took on Stravinsky's Petrushka, an enjoyable yet demanding piece. This was the highlight of the orchestra's performance: the brass section and several soloists, especially flutist Marilyn Chohaney, excelled. The placement of the piece before the break was unfortunate because the already restless audience was not anxious to sit through the long Petrushka. Sanders was already stifling by that time.

Starker completed the concert with two encores, the sarabande from Bach's fifth suite for unaccompanied cello and then a showpiece written by Piatti. The very demanding Piatti, reinforced what everyone already knew--that Starker is a marvelous technician.

After the second encore Starker gazed into the lights of Sanders Theater, showing once again his odd smile, a combination of poker face on the left and subdued grin on the right. The face looked like that of a man who had lost control of one side of his body after a stroke. Such is the character also of Starker's one-sided playing: while he may be in complete control of his technique, his sensitivity is imprisoned, waiting to gain its freedom.