A Whimper — Not A Bang
by Doug deLisle, The Times Record, August 27, 1974
IF THERE IS, as theologians love to speculate, a personal hell for all of us. I often fear that mine will consist of being strapped into a chair while mammoth quadrophonic speakers bathe me in Respighi’s “Fountains of Rome,” as cheap a bag of composer’s tricks as ever I’ve heard.
The Philadelphia Orchestra gave the piece a desultory run-through on Wednesday night, an ominous beginning to as bad week of programs as the Saratoga Performing Arts Center has ever presented.
Tchaikovsky’s “Violin Concerto” is a showy piece that requires an Isaac Stern or Jascha Heifetz to carry it off. Silvia Marcovici didn’t quite make the grade.
The young violinist has a lot of temperament, she is a compelling figure on stage, and she can play most of the notes. What she lacks is a full-bodied tone necessary to success on the concert stage.
Perhaps she would have done much better if the insensitive and cloddish conducting of Eugene Ormandy hadn’t been so unremittingly loud and rhythmically erratic.
The rousing finale of Saint-Saëns’ “Organ Symphony,” Virgil Fox at the organ, finally brought the evening out of the dumps.
I sympathize with those who came especially to hear Fox, for he only plays for about ten minutes. But what a ten minutes they were. The brilliant and flamboyant virtuoso added a sonorous resonance to the orchestra when he played all stops out that rattled every nut and bolt in the theater with gorgeous volumes of sound.
The “French Gala” on Thursday night, Robert Irving conducting, was about as gala as an evening of Wagner on the hurdy-gurdy would be.
Berlioz’s “Roman Carnival Overture,” Bizet’s “Symphony No. I” and Debussy’s “Jeux” were played in gutless fashion. There was no inner pulse to the music. Inertia, smudgy attacks and sloppy brass playing characterized the entire program.
Gelsey Kirkland and Helgi Tomasson joined the orchestra to dance in excerpts from Delibes’ “Coppelia,” the same composer’s “La Source” and Minkus’ “Don Quichotte.”
Watching the two in the Delibes was like watching the old New York Yankees in action. Everything was very cool, precise and professional. Everything was also very mechanical.
Nowhere was there a spark of life. They went through their paces like a pair of thoroughbred robots with false smiles pasted to the bottom half of their faces.
Th the Minkus, they danced as if inspired. Leaping and twirling around the stage like gazelles revelling in their freedom, they had the audience demanding and receiving an encore of the finale of the work.
Nicolai’s overture to his comic opera “The Merry Wives of Windsor” opened the closing night program entitled *Those Fabulous Philadelphians.”
It was a meandering reading that caught little of the gracious lilt of the piece. Mozart’s “Symphony No. 40” suffered from the same leaden quality.
Benjamin Britten’s “Variations and Fugue on a Theme by Purcell” was the sole highlight of the evening. The various sections of the orchestra sparkled in their solo passages, and they all contributed full, luscious tone to the exhilarating fugue that ends the work.
Parcell’s “Trumpet Voluntary” suffered from poor horn playing from the soloist. The four dances from Aram Khatchaturian’s ballet “Gayane” kept on trying to get going, but they failed to ignite.
“The 1812 Overture” finally drove home to me what was wrong with virtually the whole week. It just laid there. Where was the life, sparkle vitality and joy of performance we have come to expect from this orchestra?
Even the advertised cannons for the “1812” failed to materialize, as Ormandy decided at the last minute that they were too loud.
I, and 8,440 others had to settle for the dull thud of shotguns fired into 55-gallon drums. This is the kind of sound we have been hearing far too often lately.
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