Word: bachs
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...first time in years, Symphony Hall heard a great Bach choral work yesterday afternoon, presented both with inspiration and a proper number of performers. Gone were the monster choruses and bloated orchestras, which have often distorted the music. The Harvard-Radcliffe Chorus used about a hundred singers, and Mr. Munch cut the orchestra down to seventy, as musicologists recommend...
...real glory, however, belongs to Mr. Munch--first, for his decision to perform the piece; and secondly, because he approached this complex work with an acute sense of its drama. That, in fact, is the keystone of all Passion music. Bach composed the music to follow the sense of the words closely, and has subtle devices for accomplishing this make a fascinating study, one which Mr. Munch evidently had made...
...about the symphony . . . It is full of the tunes they sang and played then." A composer who experimented with polytonality (writing in two or more keys simultaneously) before Stravinsky even thought about Firebird (1910), Ives somewhat whimsically deeded to set his Yankee tunes "in counter point with some Bach tunes," as "a sort of bad joke." Joke or not, audience and critics enjoyed the Second as Leonard Bernstein led the New York Philharmonic Symphony Orchestra through it. Olin Downes of the New York Times found parts of it "of unique inspiration and a noble elevation of thought...
...Virgil Thomson judged it "unquestionably an authentic work of art " Altogether, the Second is much easier going than the sometimes bewildering third. It opens with a serene song in the strings, reminiscent of the green beauty of the Connecticut countryside. In the slow third movement come the "Bach tunes" in full brass, while the strings are skittering at something else. Actually, the chorales are typically Ivesian abstractions; if Ives, a kind of John Marin of music, quotes from anything, it is that old 19th Century standard, the Long Green Organ Book. If there is a "bad joke" anywhere, it comes...
...rather dead, determined performance of Bach's "Herr Gott, Dich Loben Wir" smothered the exuberance of the "sacred joy." Much more satisfying were the two choruses from Handel's "Solomon." Delicacy and perfect balance characterized the lyric invocation "Music Spread Thy Voice Around." The second, more dramatic chorus, performed with skill and sensitivity, enabled an easy transition to the tragic mood of the two following works...