To return from New York and the impeccable taste of Bruno Walter to the loud vulgarity of the Boston Symphony is an experience that puts a critic's heart into his work. I say this not out of any malice but rather as a reaction to the most poorly conceived and ill performed concert Symphony Hall has heard in several years. Unfortunately, Dr. Koussevitzky's return to the podium marked the disastrous evening.

The evening's festivities starred the playing of Gregor Piatigorsky, 'cellist extraordinary, in the Dukelsky Concerto in C. This work was performed for the first time and, like all new pieces not positively bad, is impossible to judge upon one hearing. Just how it would sound in less competent hands is conjecture; but Saturday night it produced some of the finest musical entertainment of any completely new work in Symphony Hall this year.

Once this piece, with the notable playing of Piatigorsky, has been disposed of, little good can be said of the evening. The program began with Bach's beautiful Brandenburg Concerto No. 2, and the flutist started the evening off in its continuing spirit by gurgling flatly through his first twenty-five bars. This was especially unfortunate as he was the only one of the four solo voices that could be heard over the roar of 34 violins and eight counter-basses.

Starting the broadcast half of the program, Koussevitzky gave a Bach snite that could have been conducted by Stokowski. The opening grave was played somewhat slower than is customary, and the dances were speeded up to a tempo at which no one could possibly dance. Ten counter-basses were employed for this piece of chamber music, and a gratuituous repeat was added to the final gigue.

The usual sensational and distorted performance of the Sibelius Fifth was then run through in fine style. This work is, to me, the best Sibelius has ever written; it contains at least two first rate themes: one starting the second half of the first movement, and the other running pizzicato through the andante mosso. The blown-up, excessively melodramatic performance (including the shaking, not vibrating, string) which Koussevitzky provides does not, however, penetrate deeper than the outer edge of the surface. However popular the interpretation may be, it cannot be considered valid; it stuns the audience, but it is not within a mile of the composer's intentions. pro