Word: accompanists
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...Death Be Not Proud. The Harvard Glee Club performed a less interesting program except for a mildly "modern" work by Thomas Beveridge. The Harvard group had a darker sound than Yale, better dynamic control, weaker top tenors, better phrasing, and better comic relief in the form of an accompanist who agonizingly wrenched childishly simple parts from his ill-starred piano. A final comparison is impossible since I shamelessly left before the inevitable spirituals and football songs...
...most of the time, he sings straight and true. Hammond and his accompanist, Ron Takvorian, have no tricks, but who needs them for a Kurt Weill-Maxwell Anderson beauty like "Lost in the Stars" or Arlen's "Don't Like Goodbyes...
...program opened and closed with two "heavies" from choral literature. Brahms' Schick-salslied, Op. 54, is one of those perrenial favorites of college glee clubs, not terribly difficult to put together and always effective. The singers also made the most of Holderlin's Weltschmerz. Accompanist Robert Kopelson's two-piano arrangement was the best thing next to a full orchestra. He and Lowell Lindgren played it admirably, managing to succeed in spite of Prof. Schmidt's inconquerable compulsion to conduct even them...
...Laredos' Bach was in the best Rosalyn Tureck tradition. Eschewing the harpsichord for the piano, Mrs. Laredo played lid up and with plenty of pedal. As a pianist myself I have nothing against treating the instrument as a full partner in chamber music rather than a subservient accompanist--in fact I welcome it. But the Laredos' Bach did have severe balance problems. Mr. Laredo very quickly demonstrated a full, rich tone and an easy command of dynamics on the violin. But he was more and more obliged to "force" in an attempt to hold his own against the superior string...
...Soviet Union. It was a tribute to German Baritone Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau, by all odds the world's finest lieder singer, who was to perform in the barn during the Touraine Festival in central France. It was also an act of self-effacement by Fischer-Dieskau's accompanist, Soviet Pianist Sviatoslav Richter, who has made the rustic, four-year-old festival his own showcase...