Word: tone
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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Last week, after the Brown victory, Tomassoni had commented that penalty killing was one of the team's weakest areas. A well-placed check by senior captain Ashlin Halfnight inside the Harvard end disrupted Colgate's offense and set the tone for the kill. What a difference a week makes...
Alhough this weekend's games are often allowed to set the tone for the rest of the season, last night's loss to Colgate shows more promise than last year's overtime tie to the Red Raiders...
...which had come before, with angular themes, surreptitious-sounding pizzicati, and highly percussive tutti throughout. This idiom seemed to bring out a better side of the orchestra, which took the difficult rhythms in stride, found the wit in some of Shostakovich's jazz-inflected themes, and produced an impressive tone in the louder passages. Maybe HRO felt some affinity with the piece, which the composer wrote as a senior project at the age of 18 (and you think you work too hard on your thesis). Or maybe the orchestra is just more comfortable in the twentieth century; in one concert...
Things got off to a good start with the Leonore Overture, as HRO displayed some of the strengths which mark it as a serious ensemble: excellent tone and dynamics from the strings, shown to good advantage in the mysterious, scale-like string passages at the beginning; fine soloists, especially in the trumpet and flute sections; and an overall coordination, allowing for intelligent phrasing and pacing. It's evidently more difficult to find a whole section full of excellent wind and brass players, since these sections often strained to achieve an even tone and unified entries...
Instead, the soloists were ringers: BSO cellist Martha Babcock, Boston Chamber Music Society violinist Lynn Chang, and pianist Luisa Vosgerchian, Harvard music professor emerita. The soloists were, of course, quite good, especially Babcock, whose lovely tone compensated for the poverty of her themes. Chang was, if anything, a bit too thin--though this effect may well have been due to Sanders' acoustics, which make it difficult to hear at the extreme edges of each tier of seats. Vosgerchian, meanwhile, was a beatific presence, smiling and swaying joyously throughout; even what appeared to be a nasty fall...