Afternoon performances are notoriously ragged--especially when it rains--and Sanders Theatre certainly isn't the ideal place for a large concert, anyway. I know this, and the above should serve as an apology to the members of the Harvard Glee Club, Radcliffe Choral Society, and Harvard-Radcliffe Orchestra, whose collective Christmas Concert I attended yesterday afternoon, instead of yesterday evening. But one expects (no doubt quite unreasonably) that any performance of a major work by the top musicians of Harvard will generate a certain amount of excitement; and yesterday's (which didn't) was even at best a disappointment.

Bach's Magnificat in D, for Tovey, his "most comprehensively representative work," has proved itself an arduous undertaking for almost every choral group. Bach himself conceived the Song of the Virgin as an intricately subtle and profoundly joyous cantata, and he wrote for it instrumental parts that are as demanding as they are various and voice parts that combine a considerable amount of colortura with an unusually high tessitura. Under Elliot Forbe's direction, most of the intricacies were blurred, and the joy appeared in frequent flashes.

Mr. Forbes' reading of the Magnificat was brisk and business-like, but not much else. The singing was often angular and disjointed; and the orchestra had enough trouble merely trying to follow the beat. Neither of the two seemed at all at ease with the other, and both together produced a rawness of tone that is often the product of an insufficient number of joint rehearsals.

The soloist group, for the most part, showed itself to be considerably more competent. The melodic lines were supple, the tone solid, and the phrasing refreshingly simple. But these good people were often forced to compete with the instrumentalists who were accompanying them. I was particularly impressed by Lila Woodruff's clear and completely unaffected reading of the soprano aria, Quia respexit, which she accomplished by completely ignoring a jarring accompaniment by a very poorly tuned oboe d'amore.

Only towards the end did the quality of the performance improve. The chorus, which had had little success in its earlier ventures, demonstrated in the terzett Suscepit Israel that it is still the master of choral singing. The remaining choruses were capably handled, but their effectiveness only served to emphasize the failings of the first part. Mr. Forbes and his group have given us much better music before.

The first half of the program was conducted by Michael Senturia '58, and consisted of two motets by Giovanni Gabrieli for chorus and brass choir. Mr. Senturia's deft direction elicited a clean, vigorous attack from both singers and brass in the second of the two, In Ecclesiis, but the first suffered from the same fuzzy intonation and sour accompaniment that despoiled Mr. Forbes' Magnificat.