Word: beethovens
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...boneless hands, tall Conductor Mitropoulos gave them a sample of the moderns-cum-classics programs they could expect on many evenings this season. The opener: a monstrously brassy orchestration by the late Italian composer, Alfredo Casella, of the Chaconne from Bach's Suite No. 2 for Solo Violin. Beethoven's happy Fourth Symphony, delicately if fussily performed, smoothed down ruffled feathers momentarily, but Prokofiev's screaming Symphony No. 5 got some of them ruffled right up again...
...program for the first concert was all Beethoven. The orchestra held up extremely well considering that, at the moment, it has summer and winter conductors, each at opposite musical extremes. After a summer at Tanglewood under Koussevitsky's leadership, it takes a while to get used to the more subtle style of Munch. Nevertheless, Beethoven's first symphony, a comparatively fragile, early work, was handled with all the delicacy that can be expected of a full symphony orchestra. Ordinarily, the work should be performed by about 40 musicians, and it is a tribute to Munch that he could make...
...oven greater tribute to him and the abilities of his musicians that they played the third symphony of Beethoven right afterwards as though it were being played by several hundred...
...main thing was that the program which began with Beethoven's Overture to Fidelio was easy to listen to; it was well played, though not sensationally so, and it left everyone in a good mood for the start of the season...
...Kostelanetz has forgotten what the tunes were, but he remembers that he was bowled over by their "dynamism and melody." Since then, he has been convinced that "popular music is good music," that composers like "Gershwin, Porter, Rodgers and Berlin can and should be treated as seriously as Beethoven or Brahms...