Glee Club Choral Society

The Harvard Glee Club and Radcliffe Choral Society are like latterday minstrels; they perform all over the world but only a few times a year in Cambridge. Perhaps this is why last Friday's concert at Sanders sounded a little hasty, like a glorified after thought. The program was a long and challenging collection of renaissance, baroque, and contemporary music, and the performance showed an excellent grasp of several styles of 20th century music. But the first half of the program, devoted to early music, was less successful, in part because of the simple unwieldiness of such a large chorus for this type of music.

The opening number, Schutz' Jauchzet dem Herren, was a little square, for the performers ignored Schutz' constant shifts of meter. But the anti-phonal choruses had an excitement in their tone and enunciation, and gave a bouvancy to their lines, that prefigured the best qualities of the concert. Bach's Lobet den Herrn, alle Heiden, however, was disappointing in just these respects. The tempo was too slow, the words were totally inaudible in the women's parts, and the sopranos lost their nerve half-way through. Their tone lost all conviction, and the pitch, already shaky, deteriorated.

Lassus' Psalmus Poenitentialis sounded like the least well-prepared work on the program. Instead of paying meticulous attention to the clarity and independence of each part, conductor Elliot Forbes treated the audience to gorgeous but amorphous Brahmsian sonorities.

The Slovak Folk Songs by Bela Bartok which opened the second half of the concert were a pleasant contrast to the first half. From the long, dreamy lines of the Wedding Song to the bouncy, spirited dancing songs, each song created a convincing atmosphere of its won. In Stravinsky's Russian Peasant Songs, the women, singing alone, gave the best performance of the evening. Every note and word was crisp and clear in these pulsating, rhythmic songs. In the third, the chorus and an excellent solo trio gleefully tossed the song back and forth. Dorothy Oeste's soprano in the fourth was flawless.

The problems the Glee Club encountered in Carter's Emblems were more the fault of the compose than of the performers. Carter takes a perverse delight in setting words in unnatural ways, distorting normal word and sentence rhythms. The music itself, after a pedantic first section, gets underway with a piano interlude introducing the second, the builds to an exciting climax in the third and final section. The performance followed the same patter; the first part, although competent, was somewhat static, but the rest was magnificent.

After two lightweight choruses by Carlos Chavez, the program concluded with Irving Fine's Design for October. The music was decadent but rather sweet, and Philip Frohnmayer's mellow tenor voice was perfect for the solo part. All in all, an excellent half-concert.