Word: orchestra
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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...happy to report that last Tuesday's concert left the Harvard-Radcliffe Orchestra with no occasion for apology. Immeasurably improved over last year, the Orchestra gave a performance which was fine in every detail, and at times approached professional quality...
Filling in with impromptu remarks while waiting for a member who had forgotten his music, Mr. Holmes suggested the difficulty faced by an amateur orchestra in finding appropriate music for its programs. Works simple enough to be performed by the non-professional musician are quite apt to be unsatisfactory to the listener. Granting the validity of this problem, it is more to the credit of Mr. Holmes and his Orchestra that they were able to select a program which would please the audience while still falling within the technical limitations of the players...
Aaron Copland's "An Outdoor Overture," while written expressly for amateur groups, still presents many of the complexities of meter and attack inherent in modern music. By all counts it was the most difficult piece on the program, the one in which the Orchestra ought most surely to have fallen down. Yet it emerged on top. All entrances were accurate and confident. The strings were together, really together, biting out their passages with a precision reminiscent of some Koussevitzky performances I have heard. The woodwinds were in tune with each other, and the brass was prominent but never blatant...
Conversely, the selection which probably presented the least number of technical problems--Vivaldi's Concerto Grosso--was least good. Perhaps this was due to the difficulty of integrating amateur strings when they are unsupported by the rest of the orchestra. But though ragged, there were no major shortcomings, and this familiar work received adequate treatment...
Schubert, who suffered last year at the hands of the Orchestra, is now resting in peace. Two movements of his Third Symphony were played Tuesday, and in the Trio of the third movement the Orchestra again achieved that lilt which comes only with practice and perfection. The Frescobaldi, an orchestral arrangement of an organ toccata, also showed the fruits of much careful rehearsal. But the Copland still stands as proof of what can be done if an orchestra such as ours really believes in itself...