HRO at Sanders

Friday night's Harvard-Radcliffe Orchestra concert was good throughout, but several things kept it from being excellent. Notably, poor string playing plagued the orchestra from time to time. This was especially evident in a marked fuzziness of the very first allegretto passages of Haydn's Symphony No. 99 and in several muddled string sections in the third and fourth movements of this same work. Michael Senturia conducted skillfully, but in spite of his efforts the exuberance of this fine symphony did not come across.

The most thoroughly competent performance of the evening was Stravinsky's short In Memoriam Dylan Thomas, an interesting composition scored for tenor solo, string quartet, and four trombones. Its history is rather interesting: when Dylan Thomas died unexpectedly in 1954 he was en route to collaborate with Stravinsky on an opera, and the composer, much distraught, wrote this simple, direct work in memory of his friend. The In Memoriam opens with canonic music for trombones and string ritornello; this is repeated in the postlude with the parts reversed. The middle section is a strophic setting of Thomas's "In Memoriam," written on the death of his father. A young tenor soloist of the Robert Shaw Chorale, Mr. Mallory Walker, joined members of the orchestra for this splendid rendition.

But I found the most enjoyable part of the concert to be Benjamin Britten's brilliant Serenade for Tenor Solo, Horn, and Strings. In this cycle of six English poems, Britten combines his British love of melody with a fascinating originality of composition, and the result is a masterpiece.

At Friday's concert Mallory Walker was tenor soloist with hornist Ralph Pottle, a member of the Boston Fine Arts Woodwind Quintet. Mr. Pottle unfortunately made a series of disastrous mistakes in his opening solo, and although the program notes explained that "the opening and closing horn passages shall be played as directed by the composer--on the natural harmonics of the instrument--hence the irregularities in intonation," it was painfully obvious to all what had happened when the identical passage was correctly played at the end of the piece. Those who realized at the time that Britten had not intended the opening notes to sound like a tuba solo suffered a moment of agonized embarrassment for the performer. Indeed, such a faux pas might easily have flustered the most experienced of artists, but Mr. Pottle recovered quickly and played quite well from there on. The orchestra was adequate, and Mr. Walker again sang superbly. Senturia generally kept up a good balance among soloists and instruments except in the middle of the rather terrifying Dirge, where he allowed the powerful, stabbing orchestral figures to overwhelm the vocal part. The sparkling Nocturne (Tennyson), cleverly humorous Hymn (Ben Johnson), and serene Sonnet (Keats) received especially fine treatment.

The radiant effect of Britten's composition was, however, rudely shattered by the last selection, Brahms' familiar Tragic Overture. I cannot understand why anyone would want to close a concert with this piece, and to do so after the Serenade was a programmatic catastrophe. The orchestra performed with commendable precision and gusto, but Brahms' overture was never more tragic. Poor programming caused an otherwise fine evening to end in this most unsatisfactory way.