Boston Symphony At Wellington

Press, Issue 29236, 21 June 1960, Page 20

Boston Symphony At Wellington

Yer the aeeond time in leas than a year the impossible has. happened and one of the world’a greatest symphony orchestras has visited New Zealand. Unlike the Oseeh Philharmonic, however, the Boston Symphony Orchestra did not visit the South Island and music-lovers there had to be content with which could not do justice to the astonishing brilliance of its playing—or make a pilgrimage north. In this article specially written for "The Press”, one who took the latter course writes about the orchestra and its Wellington concert.

When the Boston Symphony Orchestra’s programmes were announced there was, in Wellington at least, a certain amoufit of disappointment. One newspaper writer even went so far as to deplore the inclusion of Berlioz’s “Symphonie Fantastique,” on the grounds that it was by a composer who had never become popular with English audiences. It proved to be highly popular with a New Zealand audience.

Even if the programme was no.t everyone’s idea of the selection for so rare an occasion, it served perfectly to display the powers of both the orchestra and its conductor. For Charles Munch (pronounced Moonk), born in Strasbourg 69 years ago, has always leaned to the French side of his inheritance. Dr. Munch comes from a musical family. His father was a professor at the Strasbourg Conservatoire and his uncle, Eugene Munch taught Albert Schweitzer to play the organ music of J. S. Bach. Charles Munch, after studying the violin under Carl Flesch in Paris, became leader of the Strasbourg and, later, the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestras. He settled in faris in 1932 and began to make his career as a conductor. In five years he was conductor of the Paris Conservatoire Orchestra.

After the war he took charge of the French National Radio Orchestra, with which he toured the United States in 1948. In 1949 he succeeded Serge Koussevitzky as music director of the Boston Symphony Orchestra, which he has now taken ion three overseas tours. In 1952 and 1956 they, went to Europe, and on the second tour became the first Western orchestra to play in the Soviet Union.

The Boston Symphony came into being in 1881, when a remarkable banker, Henry Lee Higginson, began to build America’s first permanent symphony orchestra. Higginson spent a fortune on the orchestra under various conductors, including Artur Nikisch and Karl Muck, until 1918, when the burden became too great. In that year the Boston Symphony became a public trust and the property of the community it served. NEW EEA After five years under Pierre Monteux, a new era began -in 1924, when Koussevitzky’s 25year term as conductor began. Under this great musician and great virtuoso the Boston Symphony rapidly became, along with Stokowski’s Philadelphia Orchestra and Toscanini’s New York Philharmonic-Symphony, one of America’s greatest orchestras. But Koussevitzky did not only make a great orchestra, he performed a wider service to American music. He played it. During his long reign he averaged three new works every two programmes. The Boston Symphony is one of the busiest of all American orchestras. The winter season, from October,to April for 30 weeks, consists of 63 concerts in Boston, six at Harvard University, five at Providence, Rhode Island, and 15 at New York. In* addition there are up to 10 public rehearsals, one or two extra concerts and about 20 non-sub-scription concerts out of the city. When the winter season ends, Arthur Fiedler becomes conductor, the orchestra is reduced to about 90 players and it becomes the Boston Pops Orchestra for a two-month season of promenade concerts in Symphony Hall. In July Mr Fiedler takes the orchestra to a sound shell on the bank of the Charles River and gives free concerts to summernight audiences of up to 20,000. (Symphony Hall holds 2631 listeners). Later in July the orchestra, the Bbston Symphony again, goes to Tangelwood, in western Massachusetts for the six-week Berkshire Festival. Concurrent with this is the Berkshire Music Centre, of which Dr. Munch is director, where the principal

players of the orchestra pass their knowledge on to about 400 students.

For the remaining month of, the year the players are unemployed. This does not result in any starving musicians, however, for no member of the orchestra is paid less than 7000 dollars a year. Many get substantially more and nearly all have other musical activities, such as chamber music. MODERN WORK Dr. Munch has continued the tradition of playing modern American works, as shown in his New Zealand programmes. At Wellington he played Norman Dello Joio’s Variations, Chaconne and Finale. Those in the audience who had expected something aggressively "modern” soon had their fears put to rest, for the work proved to be in a fairly conservative idiom. Dello Joio, who is of Italian lineage, was a pupil of Hindemith, although this was perceptible only in the rather austere Chaconne. The finale was notable for its tense, distinctively American rhythms. The third work was Roussel’s Second Suite from the ballet, "Bacchus and Ariadne.” It held particular interest in that Dr. Munch conducted its world premiere in 1936. Like much French music, its fascination lies chiefly in the sounds it makes and it was played to perfection. The greatest enthusiasm was undoubtedly aroused by the Symphony Fantastique. It calls for a huge brehestra—Berlioz originally intended an orchestra of 300 plus 30 grand pianos—and the Boston Symphony’s 101 players were all used. The extent of the percussion department was particularly notable. There were two big bells, six tympani with two players and two men playing a huge bass drum turned on its side, in addition to the usual paraphernalia. As with the Czech Philharmonic, the percussion instruments, especially the tympani, were played with precision and force previously unknown in our concert halls. To ears accustomed to the National Orchestra other features which stood out were the brilliance of the brass and the strength and accuracy of the strings, which in the case of the ’cellos and basses is not only because of superior numbers. The woodwind soloists demonstrated real artistry in the third movement of the Berlioz. PRECISION AND SPLENDOUR But in this great orchestra no one department is more distinguished than the others, for everything is just as it should be. Over all there is astonishing precision and tonal splendour. The general sound has the clarity and brilliance more characteristic of French than Central European orchestras. The Czech Philharmonic, which is 15 years younger than the Boston Symphony, has a wanner, more enveloping sound which rides on a fuller cushion of bass. A prominent American critic, John M. Conly has written that the Boston Symphony makes the world’s grandest orchestral sound, and it is easy to believe, for in the last movements of Berlioz the intensity of sound was so great that the threshold of pain could not have been far distant. There was more in the peformance than sonic brilliance, though. Dr. Munch gave an extraordinarily tightly-knit reading, presenting the work as a symphonic structure without worrying about any programmatic intentions.

As with everything except the Dello Joio, he conducted without a score. An erect figure with a shock of white hair, Dr. Munch did not so much beat time as shape the phrases in the air with an unusually long baton. A memorable concert ended with two encores, the scherzo from Mendelssohn’s Octet and a blazing account of the march from “Die Meistersinger.” The audience was still simmering with excitement as it drifted away from the town hall.