Two House Concerts

Last week was enlivened by two rather unusual and entertaining concerts in the Houses. The first was at DunsterHouse on Wednesday night, and it presented the avant-garde among Harvard composers, plus some songs by Anton Webern, a very good name nowadays. Most of the student music has been or will be played at concerts of the Composers Laboratory, and the opportunity for two hearings is valuable as this music is often difficult to grasp at a single hearing. The Pieces for Prepared Piano by Christian Wolff, for example, seemed much more comprehensible than at the first performance; nonetheless their resources will have to be expanded, as the music is too static. The Three Songs, also by Wolff, were an evocative use of Soprano and Flute.

Fredrick Rzewski's Two Songs confirmed the initial impression they made in a Lab concert: that they were well constructed and his finest work to date. His earlier Trio, despite some lovely lyricism at times, lacked integration, and was only spasmodically expressive.

Bertram Baldwin's Quartet was very promising. Although there was some mixing of styles during the piece, it had fine strong moments that indicated a real talent. The performances in this concert were of high caliber; Soprano Sarah Jane Smith and Cellist Lawrence Lesser were especially outstanding.

On Sunday night Leverett House commemorated its 25th Anniversary with a beguiling program of widely assorted music. The first half of the concert was played by the Harvard Brass Choir, which made a noble attempt at the Contrapunctus One from Bach's Art of the Fugue, and delighted the audience with some Brass music of Johann Pezel, a 17th Century German Town Musician. The Leverett House Glee Club then joined the Brass for a Lied and Chorale by Mendelssohn. The Lied turned out to have the tune of "Hark the Herald Angels Sing" set to a German text praising Gutenberg. The effect of a lusty male chorus singing this with a Brass Choir is enough to revive the old tune to unimagined, if somewhat humorous, grandeur.

The second half of the program was given to the Cambridge Festival Orchestra, an excellent strings group under the leadership of Daniel Pinkham. As well as playing some diverting performances of music by Karl Friedrich Abel and Henry Purcell, the Orchestra presented works of two composers who were Leverett House men, Robert Moevs and Pinkham himself. The Adagio from the ballet Endymion by Moevs, and the Concertante by Pinkham were both notable more for their lyrical warmth than for modern astringent harmonies. Perhaps a sojourn in Leverett House would do us all good.