Word: hro
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Despite being steeped in two centuries’ worth of tradition and history, the Harvard-Radcliffe Orchestra has adapted to its new leadership with surprising musical ease. Federico Cortese’s debut concert with HRO on Saturday night featured an ambitious program of Berlioz, Debussy, and Tchaikovsky; its success confirmed that the departure of longtime music director Dr. James Yannatos has not compromised the musical and technical standards of the ensemble...
Members of the Radcliffe Choral Society and the Harvard-Radcliffe Collegium Musicum joined HRO members onstage for “Nocturnes,” Claude Debussy’s electrifying trio of symphonic poems. Debussy’s orchestration plays with texture and tone just as impressionist painters manipulate light and color, and the ensemble demonstrated a remarkable talent for this tonal experimentation. From the mystic wind and high string introduction to offbeat trills and pizzicato sequences in the second movement, the orchestra adeptly drifted in and out of various keys and tonalities without losing its crucial sense of rhythmic...
...years on July 1, the Office for the Arts and Harvard’s Music Department announced last week. Federico Cortese—now leader of the Boston Youth Symphony Orchestra and the New England String Ensemble—will replace James Yannatos, who first joined the HRO in 1964. An eight-member conductor search committee composed of students, faculty, and other stakeholders appointed Cortese to the post from a field of nearly 200 applicants. “The voices of the students in the orchestra were paramount in everything that we were doing,” said Jack Megan...
...pizzicato theme in the cello at the beginning, the third movement continued Yannatos’ unusual tonality. The orchestra had a kind of bulging tension just below the solo cello, and the piece ended with a radiant flourish in the cello’s highest register.After intermission, HRO President Eugene W. Lee ’10 and Office for the Arts Director Jack Megan spoke to the audience about Dr. Yannatos’ distinguished career and enormous impact on generations of Harvard undergraduates. Lee noted Yannatos’ “familial, loving relationship with his students...
...musicians were adept at authentically delivering the folk tunes throughout; a theme in the flutes in the middle of the movement, backed by tight syncopations in the violins, was especially polished, as was a lush viola solo by Elizabeth C. Adams ’10.But as a whole, HRO seemed stiffer than usual. Assistant conductor Hanjay Wang ’11, in his HRO debut, balanced the sound and skillfully led the orchestra through the several tempo changes, but an emphasis on control detracted from the sense of complete abandon that would have fully realized the piece?...