Word: flute
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...remaining music on the program consisted of items on a smaller scale. John Austin '56 continued his laudable concentration on contrapuntal techniques in his Three Madrigals for flute, violin, 'cello and piano, and Five Fugal Pieces for two violins and viola. These pieces preserved his customary refined, conservative, low-voltage, post-Delius style--except the third of the latter group, which fell back into the style of Austin's teacher, Roy Harris. Even in the Madrigals, the linear emphasis extended to the piano parts, which maintained melodic interest at all times rather than just serving as harmonic background...
Wolfson points to some ten pupils to illustrate his theory. He has a tape recording of one of them singing all the principal roles of The Magic Flute, from the Queen of the Night's famously difficult coloratura (F above the staff) to Sarastro's well-deep basso (F below the bass staff). A group of four women students recorded the minuet from a Haydn string quartet, singing cello, viola and violin parts. One boy has recorded his rumbles and squeaks over a range of seven octaves, a young man has produced close to nine under Wolfson...
...Metropolitan Opera's new production of The Magic Flute was made possible (as the program duly notes) by a grant from Mrs. John D. Rockefeller Jr. She did not get her money's worth...
Most disappointing were the new sets and staging. The Flute's libretto, with its pseudo-Masonic mumbo jumbo and up to 16 bewildering scene changes, has always been a terror to stage craftsmen, but it also offers charm, humor, pageantry and plenty of cues for imagination, and these the Met missed. Scenic backgrounds were ingeniously provided by special 5,000-watt projectors, but most of the projections were hazy and dull (one, during the Queen of the Night's big aria, looked like a distorted Manhattan skyline). And despite the magic lights at his disposal, Scene Designer Harry...
...Walter (The Incredible Flutist) Piston's Symphony No. 5, probably his best work to date. It began with something that sounded suspiciously like forest murmurs, complete with flute and pizzicato strings. But soon it built a blazing climax on a pyramid of harmonies, brass on winds on strings, in orchestration as solid as Tchaikovsky's. The first movement, indeed, was a rejuvenated Piston; in the other two, however, he reached his high points of lyricism without seeming to aim for them, leaving a feeling of puzzlement...