Professor Edward Burlingame Hill's new Sinfonietta for String Orchestra, Opus 40a, will receive its first Boston performances at this week's Symphony concerts on Friday and Saturday. The Sinfonietta (an arrangement of an earlier string quartet) is the second composition of this type which Professor Hill has written and is divided into the standard four movements. It received very complimentary New York reviews a fortnight ago -- Olin Downes in particular praising its clarity and conciseness.

In 1607, a Florentine musician in the court of the Duke of Mantua named Claudio Monteverde produced one of the first real operas. This work, "L'Orfeo", was revolutionary in character for it employed a wide varsity of musical forms as well as utilising what was then an unusually large orchestra. From this opera, two orchestral interludes titled Sinfonie and Ritornelli are to be played by the Symphony, providing an excellent seventeenth century balance for the rest of the program.

Works by Taneiev and Stravinsky

Serge Taneiev's First Symphony in C is also to be played. Taneiev (1856-1915) was a noted Russian composer and teacher whose compositions have in late years been almost neglected. This symphony, written in 1898, is hardly one to arouse enthusiasm to a fever pitch, but it is not without a certain "perfection of formal beauty", as one writer has put it.

Igor Stravinsky, a present-day Russian composer who has been inspired by Rimsky-Korsakov, dedicated to the Boston Symphony Orchestra on its fiftieth anniversary a work entitled Symphony of Psalms. This is to be performed again at this week's concerts with the Cecilia Society as the chorus. As a text, Stravinsky has taken three of the Psalms and scored them for orchestra (without violins and violas) and mixed chorus; there are three movements, the second of which is in the form of a fugue. Here as always, Stravinsky's vigorous rhythms are very much present and give the work an effectiveness which is typical of this noted modern composer.