Carter Quartet Highlights Concert

Music-making of high quality characterized the concert of chamber music presented last Thursday evening before a capacity audience in Paine Hall, under the combined sponsorship of the Harvard and M.I.T. Summer Schools.

The performers included Howard Brown '51, teaching fellow in Music, who also arranged the program; David Fuller '48; Judith Davidoff '50; and Michael Senturia '58.

All four demonstrated considerable instrumental versatility. Mr. Brown, a virtuoso of long standing on the modern flute, also played several kinds of recorder. Mr. Fuller, a concert organist, here showed his skill on a rich-toned harpsichord built in 1955 by the local firm of Hubbard and Dowd. Miss Davidoff played both the 'cello and its quite different predecessor, the viola da gamba. Mr. Senturia, a first-rate oboist, also played on several sizes of recorder; and, in three pieces, he provided the chief novelty of the evening by performing on a krummhorn--a long obsolete, J-shaped woodwind with a light, buzzing tone.

Most of the numbers on the program came from the Middle Ages, Renaissance and Baroque. The major item, however, was the Sonata for Flute, Oboe, 'Cello and Harpsichord (1952) by Elliot Carter '30. The Piano Sonata (1946) marked the beginning of Carter's complete technical mastery. The present Sonata, which won the Walter W. Naumburg Musical Foundation Award in 1956, was written between two highly controversial and monumental works, the String Quartet (1951) and the Variations for Orchestra (1955-56).

The Sonata is far more accessible on first hearing than either the Quartet or Variations, but many in the audience found it too tough a challenge. This is quite understandable, for Carter's recent music tends to be long on intellect and short on emotion, and there is little melody in the usual sense of the term.

Still, on the whole, Carter handled well the many problems of timbre and balance presented by this odd medium, though in a few places he smothered the low register of the flute. The Lento was the most appealing movement, with its recurring effective series of chord clusters on the harpsichord and its busy, feathery middle section, which seemed to be Carter's idea of a modern Queen Mab scherzo.

The weakest spot in the work is the very end. The Allegro gives every intention of finishing in a rousing climax for all four instruments; but there follow a few more measures, petering out into some harmonics for solo 'cello. This seems a bad miscalculation.

The musicians clearly had to spend most of their rehearsal time on this exceedingly difficult work. The effort was worth it, for the performance was one of amazing vigor and precision.

Also on the program were a Telemann Sonata, a Rameau suite, and a spate of smaller pieces--mostly Renaissance chansons. In some of the latter, each verse was played with a different combination of instruments--an authentic Renaissance practice, since instrumentations were not specified by the composers. And in one piece, "improvised" ornamentation was applied from a 16th-century instruction book. This scholarly approach extended even to the printed program, which contained a complete list of manuscript and printed sources such as would warm the heart of the most demanding Ph. D. dissertation grader.