Swoboda's Last HRO Concert

While the Harvard-Radcliffe Orchestra's performance was below par last Friday night, the chief disappointment of Henry Swoboda's final appearance conducting the HRO was the quality of the program he selected. He played the same nineteenth century music, sometimes camouflaged by the names of composers from other centuries, that has characterized his two years here: and he compounded it with real, and bad, nineteenth century maunderings.

In anticipation of Michael Flaksman's cello solo and Bartok's Bluebeard's Castle, one might have been able to ignore the unrelenting repetition of a simple motif in the opening Hebrides Overture (Fingal's Cave), by Mendelssohn. By attempting deafness, one might not have noticed that for a long time the brass were a measure out of step with the rest of the orchestra, and were playing so loudly that they could not hear their own error. Masochistic charity might have led one to expect the cold woodwind instruments to be out of tune at the beginning of a concert.

One might not have been upset, that is, if the rest of the program had matched expectations.

Consider the two pieces played by Michael Flaksman '66, principal cellist of the HRO. The Vivaldi Sonates en Concert in E minor for cello and orchestra were meant for cello and continuo. They sound soupy with a full orchestra. Tchaikovsky's Piano Concerto No. 1 is more at home with a saxophone band than this Vivaldi is with such a lush orchestral arrangement.

The extremely predictable music hardly demands enough of the soloist for virtuoso display. Flaksman won the concerto auditions playing the Saint-Saens concerto, which is at least pretty, flashy, and, according to cellists, a good piece of cello writing. Why diddle around with warmed-over Vivaldi?

Flaksman also played Faure's Elegie Op. 24, the structure of which is as follows: theme, theme, episode, theme, episode, theme (the last time with one note altered). It is a pity Faure does no more than repeat a nice tune a few times.

Flaksman's performance suggested a Jaguar sports car confined to Boston traffic: though it was obvious that he was good, it was hard to tell what he could do, because of what he had to play. Conforming with the Romantic arrangement of the Vivaldi, he obviously tried for as rich an effect as possible; he used heavy vibrato and full bows. Yet, curiously, he played a lot of notes on the open strings without any false vibrato an octave above or below. He made no attempt to shape whole phrases. His tone had a thin, strained sound as if he were playing on top of the strings.

Now that Flaksman has been introduced to Harvard, he, Tison Street and Ursala Oppens ought to give some trio recitals to let us see what kind of musician he really is.

A concert version of Bartok's opera, Bluebeard's Castle, filled the second half of the program. The opera is Bartok's Opus 11, written in 1911 just four years after Kodaly had introduced Bartok to the music of Debussy, and while Bartok was still under the influence of Strauss and Wagner.

The opera makes heavy demands on the soloists. Even when it allows them to be heard above the orchestra, it gives them lines unsuited to the voice. The story which the opera tells progresses much too slowly to have any dramatic effect.

Altogether, Bluebeard's Castle is an early work of a great composer, interesting enough to perform every half century. One would have been more grateful for its performance had it not been the piece de resistance of the program.

The soloists, Gwynn Cornell and Arnold Voketaitis, from the New York City Center, were a striking pair, visually and aurally. Striking, indeed. It was not possible to determine what notes Voketaitis was singing in his low register because his intonation was so muddy down there. In loud passages requiring jumps, Miss Cornell tended to shriek. Their few stage gestures, made while rooted to their positions on either side of Swoboda, were ludicrous.

At the end, the audience gave Swoboda a standing ovation. I think it was a nice gesture. In his two years here, Swoboda, who is responsible for programming, has lead the HRO far along the slick path of musical cowardice. Conceiving the HRO as a minor-league Boston Symphony, he has fed it music easily comprehensible both to the orchestra members and to audiences of the Boston Symphony type. What is so frustrating and annoying is that he did not attempt more.

Why not attempt a real symphony or concerto at every concert? Why not attempt a real piece of twentieth century music at every concert: not Frank Martin, Roberto Gerhard, Alberto Ginastera, or the diaper works of Piston, Prokofiev, and Bartok; but Schoenberg, recent Stravinsky, our own Kirchner. Of course these works are too hard for the orchestra; but the attempts would be worth much more than regurgitations--and bad regurgitations--of Mendelssohn and Faure.

As part of Harvard, the HRO has a responsibility to educate its members and its listeners, not just to entertain them. I hope that next year the officers of the HRO will urge this responsibility so forcefully on their new conductor that we will have less safe and worthless programs.