Word: piston
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...highly useful reservoir of energy. It has been put to work in a wide variety of ways. As a potter's wheel, it smooths out motion between movements of the foot pedal. On the crankshaft of an auto engine, it prevents uneven rotation that would result from piston strokes. But it is only recently that engineers looking for less polluting means of transportation have begun to give serious thought to tapping the whirling flywheel's energy...
...WALTER PISTON '24 stood up Friday and received an ovation for his Symphony No. 6 (1955), performed in honor of his 80th birthday. Written to celebrate the 75th season of the Boston Symphony Orchestra, the symphony bridges the gap between two groups of modern composers: the conservatives like Copland, MacDowell and Gershwin on one side, and the adventurers like Stravinsky, Ives and Cage on the other. Piston's music contains smatterings of new tonal techniques, and his rhythmic and melodic lines are original, not derived from folktunes, but he's interested above all in restoring order and clarity to music...
...four movements in Piston's symphony, the second is the most striking. Its rush of rhythms could easily and excusably lead to a disastrous performance. But the extraordinary direction of James Yannatos prompted well-coordinated playing, particularly from the strings and percussions. In the third movement two soloists, David Commanday on cello and Margot Wyckoff on flute, gave especially fine performances...
Yannatos's conducting technique is excellent, and his orchestra responds well to him. But four rehearsals is barely enough time to prepare for an entire concert, so the rest of the evening didn't match the Piston. Beethoven's Second Symphony, first on the program, sometimes dragged during its second and third movements, and generally sounded less inspired than other HRO performances of Beethoven. Some extra rehearsing could have polished away the rough spots in both the tutti and solo sections...
Harvard-Radcliffe Orchestra. Listz: Piano Concerto No. 1 (Richard Kogan, soloist); Beethoven: Symphony No. 2; Piston: Symphony No. 6. Tickets: $1.50 (students with ID: $1). Friday, March...