Word: munch
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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Despite an historically inaccurate interpretation by Charles Munch, Bach's St. Matthew Passion received a generally good performance yesterday from the Boston Symphony Orchestra, five soloists, the Harvard Glee Club, and the Radcliffe Choral Society. In most places not up to the exacting standards set by Hermann Scherchen on Westminster records, Mr. Munch's rendition was marred seriously by his treatment of Bach as Verdi, and by the unfortunate deletion of many beautiful arias and chorales. He also cut parts of reciatatives, which are essential to the full meaning of the story of the Passion and of the work...
...Munch cut, among other numbers, the recitatives describing the suicide of Judas and the love of Mary Magdalene, the lovely bass aria "Mache dich, mein Herze, rein," and the masterful tenor aria "Geduld, geduld...
...Munch's exclusion of several soprano and alto parts, however, seemed not such a bad idea, since Saramae Endich and Florence Kopleff turned out to be not in the same league as Adele Addison and Martha Lipton, who often appear with the B.S.O. The other soloists, however, performed excellently. As the Evangelist, Hughes Cuenod stood out, his lyric tenor voice reaching every corner of Symphony Hall, although he began to tire in part two. Mack Harrell sang Jesus with great expressiveness; the most tender moment of the whole afternoon as it should have been, was his "Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani...
Blackwood's composition, performed by Charles Munch and the Boston Symphony, was grave, withdrawn, and emotionally muted to a kind of rasping, wearied monotone. It nevertheless revealed Blackwood as a skilled technician and a stoutly original musical thinker. The winner of a recording project prize last season, the symphony will be released commercially by RCA Victor...
United Nations Day Concert (CBS, 11 a.m.-12:30 p.m.). In a taped recording of a U.N. Day ceremony held two days earlier, Charles Munch conducts the Boston Symphony in Honegger's Fifth Symphony; legendary Cellist Pablo Casals joins Mieczyslaw Horszowski in Bach's Sonata No. 2 in D Major for Cello and Piano...