Word: concert
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...ceremony came four years late, but last week Soviet Author Alexander Solzhenitsyn finally entered Stockholm's Concert House to accept the 1970 No bel Prize for Literature. "The Swedish Academy and the Nobel Foundation have probably never had as much bother with anyone as they have had with me," said Solzhenitsyn at a Nobel ban quet. The laureate was kept from attending the 1970 ceremonies by fear that he would not be allowed to return to the Soviet Union. The prize, declared the bearded exile, "has prevented me from being crushed by the severe persecution to which I have...
...everything but sell popcorn last Friday night. Its fourth annual Midnight Concert, a late-night supper of light, easily-digestible music, strove too hard for broad mass appeal. The program--the most commercial work of Benjamin Britten, the showiest piece of Debussy, and one of the plainest concertii of Mozart--was all butter and no salt...
...MIDNIGHT CONCERT was conceived three years ago, when someone decided that a program with "Till Eulenspiegel" and Prokofiev's "Romeo and Juliet" would be much more fun played at midnight. It was a pitch to stonies and straights alike, and was so successful that it was followed the next year with a real gimmick--President Bok narrating an impeccably played "Peter and the Wolf"--which drew an even rowdier and more enthusiastic crowd. The next two midnight programs tried to recapture that success by continuing to take the audience back to its childhood with "The Sorcerer's Apprentice...
...Midnight Concert has probably outlived its usefulness. First, the HRO has only four concerts a year, and is too good an orchestra to justify spending one of them either on good music which it could perform better at 8:30 or on bad music which isn't worth its time. Second, with notable exceptions like "Peter and the Wolf" there isn't much children's music which still appeals to adult concertgoers, no matter what state their heads are in by midnight. The question may even be academic, since the only piece left of this genre which comes to mind...
Nevertheless, the Bach Society concert was enjoyable, mainly because it was so human. There's a kind of humility found in sympathizing with the orchestra's faults, at the same time feeling its enthusiasm and bigness on stage...