The Harvard-Radcliffe Orchestra has not lost the sheen and precision it acquired last year when Michael Senturia '58, was named its new conductor. At their concert last night in Sanders, the HRO demonstrated once again its ability to come to grips with a large work and to conquer almost all of its demanding details.

The big work on the program was Trade Nocturnes Pour Orchestra by Debussy. It was good to hear this "Impressionist" masterpiece treated with a clear-headed approach that brought out the work's structural solidity. This was not the fog-bound Debussy, but rather the Cartesian Debussy. The essentially rationalist reading was handled excellently by Senturia's charges.

Particularly pleasing was the woman's chorus in the final section. The sung passages did not sound like the usual half-muttered versions so dear to most conductor's hearts, but rather had a youthfulness and brightness that went well with Senturia's straightforward interpretation.

The orchestra sounded fine in this place. The strings had considerable richness of tone and the wind section demonstrated considerable agility in tackling Debussy's tricky rhythmic figurations. The only section that suffered a bit from the non-mystical reading was the first Nuages. Here, clouds must somehow be evoked; the orchestral texture must be thick enough to mask entrances and cutoffs. If not, as happened last night, things tend to seem bleak and bit arbitrary.

Less praise can be given the first half of the program which matched Handel's Concerto Grosso, Opus 3, No. 1 with Mozart's Violin Concerto no. 3, K. 216. The soloist for the Mozart piece was Lawrence Franko who regularly serves as the HRO's concertmaster.

Franko plays his fiddle with the intensity of a young Dr. Miracle and has as well a sinewy tone and considerable technical agility. In fact, his performance of the cadenza of the first movement was quite marvellous and tempted me to revise my firm opinion that most candenzas are evil and should not be played under any circumstances.

Though Franko has the advantages of a really big tone, considerable forcefulness and technical facility, he lacks two elements that are almost us important as those three: control and musicality. In the first movement, he let slip enough notes to damage considerably the otherwise first-rate impression of his performance and the slow movement was marred by inelegant, abrupt phrasing. Yet, despite these considerable draw-backs, I feel certain that Franko can, and will, do far better when he performs with a little less (but not too much less) gusto. The HRO accompanied their soloist fairly well, but without the elan that it later displayed in the Nocturnes.

For the Concerto Grosso, Senturia teamed up six bass viols, eight 'celli, and a harpsichord, with a large sized crew of string and wind players. It was a semi-Stokowski reading of Handel, with much contrast between the fervid string group and the more restrained, less impassioned woodwind ensemble. The solo passages occasionally caused problems, as did the corps of basses which mainly served to muddy the sound.

Despite the bumpy first half, last night's HRO concert turned out well. It has shown again that it is not afraid of doing ambitious compositions and doing them well. Their strong point complements that of the Bach Society Orchestra, which has shown itself to be in impressive command over small-scale pieces. From the good first showings of both these orchestras, I'm certain that a rewarding season of undergraduate music is in store for Cambridge.