Word: concertant
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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Modern sound engineers have worked marvels of clear acoustics. But have they made too much of a good thing? The question was raised after London's Royal Festival Hall was completed four years ago, and it came up again after the first concerts in the new concrete-domed Kresge Auditorium at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (TIME, June 29, 1953). "The sensation," wrote Boston Herald Critic Rudolph Elie, after a Boston Symphony concert, "is thrilling to the last degree." But he called the hall "acoustically naked," pointed out that a "creaking shoe, a blow through the exhaust valve...
...made up his mind about Kresge Auditorium. On concert nights, Bolt and his associates may be seen busily picking up unpremeditated opinion from critics and public about the hall's acoustics. Orchestra men generally like it, because they can hear each other as the sound bounces off the "clouds" (in most halls, a violinist hears little beyond the string section, a trumpeter hardly anything except the brasses). So far, the novelty of being able to hear so clearly has convinced audiences, too, that Kresge is an acoustic marvel. But if, as seems likely, it becomes the acoustic model...
...first concert of the Harvard Freshman Glee Club and the Radcliffe Freshman Chorus was very carefully planned. For three months the singers had been rehearsing three times a week and, for their initial program, they chose no pieces of extraordinary difficulty. This care was well worth while; on Sunday night an overflow crowd at the Union was treated to an excellent concert...
...articulated by the Radcliffe Chorus and six soloists. Among the modern pieces which Radcliffe performed were Britten's exquisite Balulalow, originally written for children's voices, and Christmas Bell by Thomas Beveridge '59. Beveridge combined modal harmony to a nicely vocal melody but, for the only time during the concert, the singers' intonation was somewhat faulty. Radcliffe sang Vaughan Williams' Winter, and the chorus' cleanest attacks of the evening helped make this piece strong and exciting. The first sopranos were shrill, however, in the upper register...
...Radcliffe and Harvard groups joined forces at the end of the concert for the Credo from the Lord Nelson Mass, by Haydn, and Bach's Wir Sctzen Uns from the St. Matthew Passion. A freshman chamber orchestra accompanied the Passions' magnificent lullaby. The two choruses sang well together; in the future they should join forces for a larger portion of their joint concerts. Both Miller and Radcliffe's Cornelia Davenport conducted with an agreeable lack of interpretive mannerisms. They deserve credit for building the freshman choruses into a fine musical organization...