Word: handels
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Biggs' choice of program was ill-advised. He began with no less than five lengthy sets of variations--by Pasquini, Valente, Soler, Sweelinck and Handel. The theme-and-variations format has produced more dull music than any other, from the Middle Ages to rock 'n' roll. And many of the greatest composers have failed at it. The high quality of the Valente and Sweelinck works was partially obscured by the numbing tediousness of the Pasquini and Soler. The Handel work--the so-called "Harmonious Blacksmith" set--comes from a harpsichord suite and does not belong on the organ, despite...
Also on the program were Mozart's Fantasia in F-minor, K. 608; and Handel's Concerto No. 2 in B-flat, in which Biggs failed to interpret properly the "French style" of the first movement. The best playing of the evening came in the sole modern work. Litanies, by Jehan Alain, tragically killed at 29 during the second World...
Finally, 15 musicians boarded a swanboat decked with flowers and shrubs, and performed Handel's "Water Music" Suite while the boat sailed around the Public lagoon under floodlights, with thousands of people lining the banks all around. It was an amusing gimmick, but it badly misfired. Whenever the boat got 75 or so yards away, the strings and woodwinds became totally inaudible and one could hear only the two horns and, in the finale, the two trumpets. The basic idea was not bad; the choice of music...
...Friday night's concert, the major work was Schubert's 7th Symphony, with a Bartok Dance Suite and a Handel Concerto for strings and double wind orchestra filling out the program. In the Bartok, conductor Attilio Poto's strong technique was invaluable to the orchestra as he guided the players through the rhythmic complexities of the work...
...Handel, on the other hand, suffered the typical fate of most of the Orchestra's "curtain raisers" in receiving a rather perfunctory performance, enlivened only at the end by the virtuosic oboe solos of Michael Palmer and Michael Senturia. For the remainder of the piece, the playing was accurate but not very energetic, and the antiphonal possibilities of the work were not explored...