Word: brittens
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...program notes read like a travel brochure: "Let us walk through Mozart's garden . . . We enter by an unassuming little gate: the Symphony in D [K.84] of the 14-year-old Mozart." The guide on this all-Mozart stroll last week was Benjamin Britten, 37, one of Britain's most highly rated composers (Peter Grimes). But the Holland Festival audience in Amsterdam's Concertgebouw was in for a grievous disappointment: not only did Benjy stray off the path; he tromped on the flowers...
...bobbing Britten conducted the nervous, unsettled Dutch Broadcast Chamber Orchestra through an erratic performance of the symphony. Next, Benjy helped stagehands trundle a piano to the front while fidgety fiddlers scraped their chairs out of the way. As soloist-conductor in the Piano Concerto in G (K.453), Britten continued to have a difficult time. Next came the Adagio and Rondo for glashar-monica, flute, oboe, viola and cello. For the glasharmonica (an 18th Century version of musical glasses), Britten substituted-and played-the celesta, beating time with his head when his hands were on the keys. Two short numbers...
...Perfect Gem. In 1949, tired and grey, Koussy turned his baton over to Charles Munch. In 25 years, he had brought to U.S. ears more contemporary music than anyone else in history. His Koussevitzky Music Foundation had commissioned works from such giants as Bartok and Britten. His dream was realized...
Instead, staunch Critic Smith laid about the field with renewed energy. He had kind words for some-Composer Benjamin Britten, Conductor Sir Malcolm Sargent. But he found the acoustics of the new hall built for the Festival of Britain "harsh" and "unlovely. One felt like rushing out to seek the relative quiet of Waterloo Station." Last week, while Britons raged, he wound up his four-week critical series with a sermon...
Thomson would have been on stronger ground in citing the absence of contemporary music. Community's 1,000 audiences did not see Stravinsky, Shostakovich, Schoenberg or Britten on any pianist's program. They heard the music of only three contemporary U.S. composers, Morton Gould, Aaron Copland and Virgil Thomson himself. Fourteen touring symphony orchestras served soothing programs made up mostly of Tchaikovsky and Wagner. Stravinsky cracked a few programs with his Firebird suite...