Word: barbirollis
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...HOUSTON SYMPHONY has come a long way from the days when it played Old Black Joe for encores and accompanied a wrestling match at a war-bond rally. The secret of the Houston's success today is Sir John Barbirolli, 66, whose solid musicianship, gained during a long career as conductor of such ensembles as the New York Philharmonic and Britain's Hallé Orchestra, compensates mightily for the lack of depth in his players. Mindful that attendance had skidded with the modernist programming of Leopold Stokowski (1955-61), Barbirolli plays it safe and sticks close...
MAHLER: SYMPHONY No. 9 (Angel; 2 LPs). Mahler's orchestral masterwork, his last completed symphony, is played in the grand manner by the Berlin Philharmonic, Sir John Barbirolli conducting. The first movement, as long as Beethoven's Fifth Symphony, is full of fluctuating rhythms that move along with a tidelike pull. Barbirolli lets them ebb and flow, then swings vigorously into the dissonant dance movement and the coarse burlesque Rondo that mock the first floating dreams...
VAUGHAN WILLIAMS: SYMPHONY NO. 2 (Sir John Barbirolli conducting the Halle Orchestra; Everyman). Sir John, maestro of both the Houston Symphony and the Halle of Manchester, gives a glowing performance of the too-little-heard impressionistic symphony called "The London." Here are pomp and pageantry, cockney airs, the chimes of Big Ben, and a luminous lento movement that the composer called "Bloomsbury Square on a November afternoon." The music also evokes an era; it was completed...
...Barbirolli had been Toscanini's choice to succeed him as conductor of the New York Philharmonic, and for seven years he endured in the impossible gloom of the old man's shadow, leading an orchestra that seemed to be looking the other way. At last he went home to England to take over Manchester's Halle Orchestra, which he doggedly rebuilt from a draft-drained band of 23 to one of Britain's finest ensembles. In 1959, he returned to New York and won a thunderous sentimental welcome; the next year he announced he was pushing...
...John thrives on Texas. He and Lady Barbirolli make do in a Texas-rococo garden apartment and his favorite photo shows him wearing a little Western tie with "GO TEXAN" written on it. The ladies all declare themselves bewitched by him ("He's so wonderful, especially after Stokowski") and turn up in high fashion for his concerts. On anniversary night last week, all were in their places to hear Sir John conduct a sparkling Cockaigne Overture, a disappointing Death and Transfiguration, a warm and distinguished Beethoven Seventh. Sir John's greying mane shook in a fury of excitement...