All-Stravinsky Concert

The Festival concluded this past weekend with a thrice-performed all-Stravinsky concert on the occasion of the composer's 75th birthday. Stravinsky is this year's recipient of the Arts Festival Medal.

The concert, under the direction of Robert Craft, a young disciple of the composer, began with Greeting Prelude, which Stravinsky wrote in 1955 for Pierre Monteux's 80th birthday. It is merely an elaborated fanfare on the wellknown "Happy Birthday To You" tune.

The opening section of Petrouchka followed, ruined by an absolute hacker of a pianist. The Capriccio, consisting of two dry movements enclosing a Bachian arioso, featured the composer's son Soulima as piano soloist. He did well enough though he has played it better in the past.

The Symphony in Three Movements suffered from ragged string playing and the incompetent pianist. This is no fault of the conductor, who has an unorthodox but very clear beat; he just had a bad orchestra to work with.

The concert was saved from failure by Renard, only now having its New England premier after 41 years. This used a small orchestra of 15 or so, and they were able to play with the requisite precision. The work is a ballet-burlesque, brilliantly choreographed after Balanchine, wonderfully costumed, and impeccably danced by Todd Bolender, Francisco Moncion, Herbert Bliss and John Mandia as a fox, rooster, cat and ram, respectively. Their singing counterparts, also excellent, were tenors John MeCollum and John King, baritone Robert Gay, and bass Herbert Gibson.

Finally a word of appreciation for the unskimping, 64-page program booklet for the Festival. Whoever planned it, besides listing the works of art, the programs and casts and other information, went out of the way to get specialists to write helpful auxiliary essays on the various evening events. This is representative of the tremendous thought, care and effort that have gone into the planning and realization of the whole Boston Arts Festival