Word: soloist
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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Musical high point of the evening: Bartok's Violin Concerto, with Yehudi Menuhin as soloist. The orchestra played with parade-drilled smoothness and reflex-sharp rhythmic feel. Said Menuhin afterwards: "It's the first time I ever played the whole concerto straight through at rehearsal without stopping and explaining. This music is in their blood; it's like American children dancing rock 'n' roll...
After a brilliantly witty commentary, Walter Piston '24, Namburg Professor of Music, conducted his own immaculate "Divertimento for Nine Instruments." Robert Brink was the fine soloist in the first local performance of the revised version of Alan Hovhaness' Concerto No.2 for Violin and String Orchestra, a rather bland neo-modal work. Carl Ruggles' extremely dissonant Angels was written for either string or brass ensemble; the performance here by strings could not equal the extraordinary effect that three trumpets and five trombones can achieve. The concert ended with Daniel Pinkham '44 conducting the combined chorus and orchestra in his new Wedding...
...opening section of Petrouchka followed, ruined by an absolute hacker of a pianist. The Capriccio, consisting of two dry movements enclosing a Bachian arioso, featured the composer's son Soulima as piano soloist. He did well enough though he has played it better in the past...
...played elsewhere-Beethoven's Fifth Symphony, Strauss's Don Juan, excerpts from a Ravel Daphnis and Chloö suite. There was little stamping-only applause-for newer works (by Wallingford Riegger, Samuel Barber, Paul Creston, Bela Bartok). Said Dziennik Polski: "The Cleveland Orchestra plays like one magnificent soloist . . . A thing like yesterday's concert was never before seen or heard here...
Bertelson is a candidate for honors in History and Literature and was elected to Phi Beta Kappa in November. Freeman, an honors candidate in Music, has been a piano soloist with the Harvard-Radcliffe Orchestra and directed a musical quiz show on WHRB...