Word: orchestra
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...particularly pleasant surprise of The Sorcerer is the orchestra. Still under the faithful direction of Bradford Chase, the musicians only occasionally overpower the singers. This problem has plauged many a show held in the Agassiz Theater. Fortunately, here it is finally remedied: One can hear most of the main characters even from the seats closest to the orchestra...
...Harvard-Radcliffe Gilbert & Sullivan Players productions may not be the most popular theater events of the school year, but The Sorcerer certainly deserves its moment in the spotlight. A talented cast, beautiful costumes, a great orchestra and a 100-year-old script that still gets laughs all combine to make a show truly worth anyone's time and money. Perhaps you will resist the charm and musical delight that this season's spellbinding Sorcerer delivers. If you do, fine. You won't be cursed with anything, except maybe regret. But that would be welldeserved...
...orchestra left the stage after the overture, and a massed chorus of over 160, comprised of the Harvard Glee Club, the Radcliffe Choral Society and the Harvard-Radcliffe Collegium Musicum, took place behind the empty chairs for the performance of Fest und Gedenkspruche, Op. 109. Brahms composed this piece, a collection of three songs, in 1889 as a tribute to Hamburg's liberation. Brahms intended them both as a celebration of Germany's victory in the Franco-German war of 1870-1871 and an expressed hope that Germany would live up to her glorious past...
...third piece, the Schickalslied (Song of Destiny), the orchestra rejoined the chorus on a very crowded stage. The text of this piece is taken from a poem Friedrich Holderlin adapted from his own novel Hyperion. The poem glows in the first few stanzas, meditating quietly on the peace of heaven but shifts abruptly to stormy despair in describing "suffering mortals" being swept hopelessly from place to place...
...music fits the text perfectly, the orchestra opening with what must be one of the most sublime melodies Brahms ever wrote. The soprano and alto sections of the chorus entered with the woodwinds to introduce the text, with the male voices joining in later...