Time was you could write a review of the Harvard-Radcliffe Orchestra without attending a concert. The violins would be out of tune, the clarinets would screech, and the strings and winds would cheerfully experiment with the tempo. No more: or at any rate, a lot less. The HRO still has its persistent problems--most distressingly, an inability, especially among the winds, to play really softly--but last Saturday's concert showed that the orchestra is getting there.

David Avshalamov, the soloist in Milhaud's Percussion Concerto made the opening piece fun to watch, pulling one instrument after another--including a dilapidated Fourth-of-July noisemaker--from a cache under his row of drums. His engaging performance made it hard to concentrate on the music, and it was just as well, for musically the piece is quite dull.

Not so Beethoven's Piano Concerto No. 4. Unfortunately, Orin Grossman's performance, light and brilliant though it was, lacked the warmth the work must have to be effective. The first movement suffered most: the opening solo was not instantly captivating; the orchestra plodded along sounding labored, even leaden. The second movement contained some beautiful moments. In the finale the orchestra caught fire, and Grossman's brilliance served him well. The movement was marred only by the orchestra's repeated failure to play the main theme truly pianissimo.

The most satisfying performance of the evening was that of Leon Kirchner's Sinfonia, a dark and powerful work bearing traces of Schoenberg's influence. Kirchner likes to have a lot going on at once. It's difficult to grasp the entire piece on first hearing, but the HRO's performance helped. Conductor James Yannatos directed with clarity and sensitivity, and the orchestra responded nobly, playing difficult passages as cleanly and delicately as one could wish.

The Tchaikovsky Romeo and Juliet fantasy-overture was disappointing despite occasional flashes. Runs which used to spell disaster for the strings were clean, and the horns were the best I've ever heard them. But the performance as a whole was dead; the woodwinds trod on the opening with an expressionless mezzo-forte, one passage of rich string chords was painfully out of tune, and Yannatos' overall interpretation was too straight. He seemed to have little interest in bringing out Tchaikovsky's natural schmaltz. With that sort of attitude, he probably shouldn't have performed Tchaikovsky at all.