Word: orchestra
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1950-1959
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...first and last pieces on the program by Samuel Barber and Manuel DeFalla could not possibly be considered "difficult" works and, to those familiar with Schoenberg's atonal period and the orchestral songs of Mahler, the Octandre by Edgar Varese, the French avant-garde composer and the Four Orchestra Songs by a young American, Benjamin Cutler, should not have posed insuperable problems of listening. More importantly, perhaps, they all provided ample opportunity for the orchestra to demonstrate its improved technical virtuosity and musical sensitivity...
Victor Manusevitch's programming for the second concert of the Cambridge Civic Symphony Orchestra was highly imaginative, but the Orchestra's response to his direction was often disappointing, for one reason or another. In the Mozart Piano concerto (K 271, in E flat) the very excellence of the soloist, a young Frenchwoman named Eveylne Crochet, made the Orchestra's contribution seem rather weak. Mile. Crochet's reading, a compendium of elegant phrasing, effortless roulades, and delicious, unforced tone (for which the piano is probably due some credit) was the performance of a knowing, sensitive professional. But the Orchestra is only...
Schumann's Konzertstueck for four horns and orchestra, Op. 86, was another sort of problem, for while it was good to hear this interesting, energetic piece, it was plain that the supremely confident soloists required had not been found, the horn being a notoriously intractable beast. There was volume, but no dash, nor was the Orchestra able to warm to its part in the proceedings. Unhappily, the Brahms Tragic Overture also turned out in a pale, unsatisfying version. The opening was uncomfortably ponderous rather than massive, while the uncanny march towards the middle was revved up to a prosaic speed...
...program's opening the Orchestra showed of what standards it was capable in a brilliant reading of Haydn's superb La Passione, the symphony No.49 in F minor. Never for a moment lacking in inspiration, the symphony is a product of Haydn's thirties, a tempestuous, tragic utterance that ought to give new ideas about this composer to those unfamiliar with his early work. Played with vigor and affecting lyricism, it was the sort of performance Mr. Manusevitch can, and hopefully will give us in the spring concert, which includes a contemporary work and a Handel harp concerto. The Orchestra...
...summer of 1935, died before he could hear it performed. A tenderly elegiac work, it spreads a filigreed web of wispy lyric phrases, works up to a climax drawn from a phrase of a Lutheran hymn (Es ist genug), ends with the violin soaring softly above the fading orchestra. Last week's audience warmly applauded Stern's sensitive reading of the concerto's twilit moods-which he describes as "neurotic...