Word: berge
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...Vermeer Quartet presented a highly commendable concert July 24--well-rehearsed, carefully controlled, and enjoyable. The three works on the program (Haydn op. 76, no. 1; Beethoven op. 74; and Berg op. 3) are masterful pieces in interestingly contrasting styles. In matters of performance technique and ensemble, there is little to criticize and much to praise: intonation was generally very good, especially in unison passages; the four voices were usually well balanced and blended, without sacrificing an essential degree of individuality; tempi were sometimes a bit on the slow side, but never dangerously so; the softer dynamic markings were occasionally...
...hyper expressionistic playing of the first half of the concert would have been quite appropriate in the Berg Quartet. Here, unhappily, the energetic intensity of the performance at times bordered on hysteria--the only moments of the evening when solid technical mastery began to waver. Too many crunchy or strained fortissimi, and an over-emphasis of percussive aspects resulted in something like Everyman's stereotype of a 'modern' work; and the audience response was stereotypically reserved. But all of this is contrary not only to the spirit of the score, but also to Berg's expressed attitude toward the performance...
...which, I reiterate, was largely exemplary). It is a matter of conception. To cries of "purist" and "unimportant details" which may be provoked by the foregoing. I respond: it depends on how you hear things. Music is both feeling and idea--especially in the periods of Haydn, Beethoven, and Berg. The problem obviously in not an easy one; as Szell put it, "the borderline is very thin between clarity and coolness, self-discipline and severity." Nevertheless, to appeal only to the listener's 'gut reactions,' (however tastefully) and his ability to discern technical proficiency, is to offer, unnecessarily, something less...
...other two nincompoops. Stephen Benson's Norman isn't comically awkward, just awkward; to be interested in him at all as a character we'd have to see his writing, and Benson can't move well enough to compensate the playwright's thinness. Worst of all is Caria Berg's strident Sophie Rauschmeier, with a banshee voice and a great stone face that moves in clicned exaggerations when it does move...
Died. Morris ("Moe") Berg, 70, superintellect of big league baseball; in Belleville, N.J. After graduating from Princeton with honors in 1923, Berg signed on for a summer with the Brooklyn Dodgers to finance a trip to Europe. Despite his mediocre bat (.243 lifetime average), he stayed in the game for 19 years, the last seven as catcher and coach for the Boston Red Sox. In the offseason he also became fluent in ten languages, studied at the Sorbonne, and picked up a law degree at Columbia University. Berg quit baseball in 1942 and served as an OSS agent in Nazi...