Word: beethovens
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...Beethoven at Last. To Virgil Thomson, critic of the New York Herald Tribune, who devoted three tart Sunday columns to the subject, the biggest audience in the U.S. is getting very poor service indeed. He had a flock of letters from readers telling him, "How right you are!" Both Ward French, president of Community, and Marks Levine, board chairman of Civic, were ready to tell him how wrong...
Critic Thomson conceded the real accomplishments of the organized-audience plan. Music has been brought to many a U.S. community that had never heard Beethoven or Mozart beyond the range of a radio or record-player. Hundreds of young virtuosi who might otherwise be pounding nails instead of pianos for a living are playing recitals and concerts, building careers. And it is all done without local deficits. Individual "members" in each city pay their "dues" of $6 ($5 plus $1 federal tax) to their own community association, the number of members determines how much can be spent for artists...
...programs of artists at a lower level are "censored in a most arbitrary fashion" by the New York concert services (who promptly denied it). "With concert business bigger than ever (by volume)," wrote Thomson, "the concert repertory gets smaller year by year. There are only five piano sonatas by Beethoven that the central offices will accept without a row. No long work by Schumann is considered by them to be good business out of New York, except the Carnaval, and they usually demand extensive cuts in this. Any Bach suite is frowned upon, if played entire . . . The Schubert sonatas...
Actually, Thomson had some of his facts wrong. Community could prove by its 1949-50 programs that its 37 touring pianists played twelve Beethoven sonatas...
Last night's concert by the Boston Symphony in Sanders Theatre contained some beautiful examples of what not to do. The only musician who escaped unscathed was Beethoven; his straight-forward "Egmont" overture received the powerful performance it merited--but when that was over, the troubles began...