Word: bso
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...flight performance of five different programs on five consecutive nights with a strange conductor and a strange soloist is absurd. The strangeness produced inferior results from all of the participants. Serkin's performances on the first few nights were wooden and incompatible with the orchestra, and the BSO, in its turn, was unused to Rudolf's distinctive style. Naturally, the performances did little to enhance the reputations of Serkin, Rudlof, BSO, or Beethoven...
...highly correct and well paced interpretation, while Serkin played his own version, accenting different notes than the orchestra, making the humorous passages of the last movement so fast and racy that it sounded like Milhaud. The Fifth Concerto was almost unbearable. The Emperor has grown so familiar to the BSO that the orchestra dismisses it lightly. Only a few forte passages of the first movement and the opening of the second had any sort of inspiration, and the second movement fell apart before the end of twenty bars. The only redeeming features tof Wednesday and Thursday evenings were the performances...
Morale at the orchestra was at its lowest in recent memory when Leinsdorf departed, and the BSO, which had been one of the international greats under Koussevitsky and Munch, was trailing each of the other four major American orchestras in record sales. When RCA Victor picked up the contract for Ormandy and the Philadelphia, there were rumors that the company would phase out Boston, because of the lack of magnetism in Leinsdorf's conducting. Leinsdorf was criticized as being excessively Germanic in interpretation, and at least one orchestra member publicly stated that he would rather be conducted by a metronome...
...that new blood was needed, and Leinsdorf's resignation was not too surprising. His successor, William Steinberg of Pittsburgh, came somewhat as a surprise. Pittsburgh was not one of the major orchestras, although Steinberg himself was a man of proven competence. This year, he began his career at the BSO, serving as Music Director and conducting part time while finishing out his tenure at Pittsburgh...
Likewise, the news that the BSO has removed itself from the clutches of RCA Victor and signed a recording contract with the prestigious Deustsche Gramophon Gesellschaft must hearten owners of high priced music systems who appreciate the better quality of DGG recordings. The extent of the changes Steinberg is making is not fully known, however, since he, most tactfully, is not publicly announcing them. Rather, the word has leaked out from the people involved of the vast changes going on in the makeup of the organization...