Wednesday night in Sanders Theater, the Music Department presented the second in its spring term series of free concerts. In a program which was too long and too varied, no one would have missed the Beethoven March, nor did the somewhat uninspired rendition of Mozart's Sonata in D Major justify its inclusion. Pianists Robert Cornman and Leonid Hambro showed their grasp of the nineteenth century, however, in Schubert's Eight Variations, which predicted the styles of his successors with remarkable accuracy.

The performance of Harold Shapero's Four-Hand Piano Sonata indicated that the interest of the two pianists is in contemporary music. Both devoted themselves to giving the work every advantage. Shapero composed the piece during his first year out of Harvard, and Leonard Berstein performed it with him for the first time in 1942.

After intermission, Alfred Howard and Robert Matson joined the pianists in Bartok's Sonata for Two Pianos and Percussion. It was clearly the big attraction of the evening; in fact, I thought Sanders Theater would fall in a heap from the applause when it was over. Just how much of the work's impact comes from powerful writing and how much from the force of the medium is hard to tell on first hearing. It seemed to me that much of the percussion part was only reinforcement, especially in the first movement. The two elements have a clearer relation to one another, however, in the last two movements, when the timpani picks up a theme from the pianos, or the xylophone introduces one of them for development. Whatever the magic, it is an over-whelming work, and it is not surprising that the enthusiasts were carried away by the superb performance.