Word: senturia
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...unusually excited audience filled Sanders Theatre Friday night to welcome what might be termed the "new" Harvard-Radcliffe Orchestra on the occasion of its opening concert this year, and the debut of its conductor, Michael Senturia. It was a triumph all around as the orchestra, after recent years of mixed success, proved itself to be one of Harvard's most important performing groups...
...Senturia started originally as a pianist--but at the tender age of six, he quit "since I didn't like to practice." Five years later, he took up the oboe and developed great virtuosity, playing in the Woodrow Wilson High School orchestra and band, plus "a few college orchestras." For two summers, he occupied first oboe position at Interlachen, famed music camp in Michigan--"my love of music derived from my experience there"--and after his freshman year at Harvard, he attended the Eastman Conservatory for a summer. "I then had great doubts about the value of a University versus...
...Senturia admits, "I'm by no means a finished musician. I'm still studying with scores, at the piano, or `by ear. There is no real set pattern of advanced study for a musician, and as a conductor I must build up my repertory." To help accomplish this, and, more important, to provide more interest at the HRO's rehearsals, Senturia often conducts the Orchestra in pieces not meant specifically for concerts, a new practice this year. "This gives us all more variety and wider acquaintance with musical literature...
...concerts presented by the HRO this year also will differ from the patterns of previous years. "We hope to present short programs of music of more than common interest and less than common knowledge," Senturia states. For example, in Friday's concert, the Orchestra will present Stravinsky's "Symphonies of Wind Instruments," "a particularly uncompromising piece," Senturia's own arrangement for strings of Bach's six-part Ricercar, from "The Musical Offering," plus the Beethoven concerto...
...Senturia has long-range doubts about his continued work in music at the University. "I am a little cautious of the academic world in certain respects, and I am not convinced this is the best place for a performing musician." Contemporary composers should come to the University to play and speak with undergraduates "or else the entire musical community cannot flourish," Senturia recommends. Music at Harvard for him thus does not stop with the HRO; it is a living, all-important concern which extends far beyond his three rehearsals per week and his teaching in Music 253, formerly taught...