Word: bache
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This carefully tooled engine of mu sic is the Moscow Chamber Orchestra, a group of 22 young, well-tempered muzykanly currently touring the U.S. with a rich repertory that runs from Bach to Bartok. At the wheel is Conductor Rudolf Barshai, 39, a trim violist who organized the group in 1955 at the Moscow Conservatory...
Cast Iron & Silver. Bored with string quartets and big orchestras, Barshai set out to build an 18th century chamber orchestra that he hoped would do justice to the "more profound" composers-Bach, Vivaldi, Handel and Mozart. He found plenty of recruits eager to put up with his tough discipline. To achieve its tight togetherness, the group practices six days a week, eleven months a year. And the work is all the tougher because Barshai insists that all the instruments (save the harpsichord and cellos) be played from a standing position, just as in Bach...
...responsibility for the oppressive uniformity of the Bach rests more with Mr. Biss. Perhaps because of the inexperience of his players or the limitations of his soloist, he chose indifferent tempi for every movement. He took the second, for example, too slow for bounce and too fast for grace; the music just ambled along like an elephant. He also failed to provide variety in the orchestral dynamics to compensate for the restricted possibilities of the flute; most of the time, the notes did not seem to flow in any direction. Only in the fifth movement did the waters of dullness...
...whole spirit of the Schubert Symphony differed from that of the first half of the program. A sharp, solid attack began the first movement. The rich tuttis which followed seemed to involve Biss in the music more than anything had in the Bach and Mozart. In the third movement, for example, Biss seemed more at home demanding histrionics of the orchestra than he had been before demanding discipline of it. Again, perhaps because of the limitations of his orchestra, his Presto vivace barely passed allegro; but the overbearing horns and the soft sections that never got soft should have been...
...looseness at the joints, the Schubert as a grand gesture was accepted happily enough, and most of the large audience felt it got its money's worth. At the next concert, it will be interesting to see how a conductor with romantic proclivities develops a limited and largely inexperienced Bach Society Orchestra...