Doriot Anthony Dwyer, principal flutist with the Boston Sumphony Orchestra, was the only female principal player in any major U.S. orchestra when she was awarded the position twenty-five years ago. This weekend, Dwyer travels across the River from her home-away-from-home concert hall to solo in two large works presented in Friday night's Harvard-Radcliffe Orchestra concert. The first work, a Concerto for Flute and Orchestra, was written for her by the late Walter Piston. Dwyer premiered the unrecorded work in 1972 with the BSO under Michael Tilson Thomas.
Bach's Fifth Brandenburg is far and away the best known, and most likely the best loved of the Brandenburgs. Dwyer joins soloist/forces in the "triple" concerto with Luise Vosgerchian, music department chairman/pianist and James Yannatos, HRO conductor/violinist. The two latter performers will perform in their latter capacity. Those expecting to hear the keyboard part played on a harpsichord should be warned that Vosgerchian has chosen to play instead on a piano, possibly compromising the sparkle of the fabulous cadenza cascades for a sound that is more suitable to Sanders.
For the main course, the orchestra will play Beethoven's seventh symphony, without any soloists.
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Although an infrequent concert-goer, I somehow managed to be conned into going to the annual Krok/Whiffenpoof/Tigertone in spring of my freshman year. My most vivid memory of that event, two years later, is of a group of young out-of-town women, apparent veterans of Krok concerts, clamoring for seats in the front row of Sanders. Half-way through a song in the second half, when a bearded and chivalrous Krok stepped out into the audience to take a random young woman by the hand onto the stage, it occurred to me what the seating ruckus was all about. I suppose it must be traditional by now that a pretty young thing gets escorted onstage so the thirteen finger-snapping young men can ooh, aah, ooh at her while 1400 ticketholders in the audience can only pity the young thing who gapes out, rigor-mortified, at the shadowy mass. Even if this was where Anita Bryant got her big break, is it really worth all the trouble?
You might just as well sit in the second row, for the standard collegiate hash will reach every corner of the theater, arousing smiles on an audience full of old-and new-timers with a weakness for the snaphappy sound. The Kroks rendition of "Blue Moon", along with its tortuous and ticklish bass line, was worth the price of admission, so if they program it this year, they'd do well to keep the concert short, and release you in time to see Casablanca, which should be leaving the Brattle very soon.
But in case they don't program it, the evening's guest vocal groups (the Radcliffe Pitches, the Wheaton Whims and the Yale Whiffenpoofs) no doubt have some Broadway Babies in stock What became of Princeton (not invited this year) is a mystery, for the evening has traditionally been one of "friendly rivalry" (so say the Kroks) between the Crimson, Elis, and Tigers.
Perhaps the idea was for the Wheaton substitute to incite a proliferation of pretty young things for the host to humiliate. Perhaps, on the other hand, we may see the birth of a latter-day Connie Francis.
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Mary, Queen of Scots was a woman's lib advocate moved not by her age, but by an internal drive to reverse the deep-seated prejudices against her sex. She wrote letters to her sister trying to impress upon her the need to be well-versed in women's literature, and well aware of the sundry contributions they've made outside the literary arts. The queen went so far as to recommend the memorization of lists of women writers, so that when called upon to defend the gender, every woman would have verbal ammunition at the tongue-tip.
It turns out that Mary was quite a prodigious writer herself, having taken pen to paper at every emotional juncture in her life. Various manuscripts of hers, that have immortalized women written in Latin, English, and French, were recently set to music by Priscilla Chapman '67 who will conduct the work as her own group, the Radcliffe Choral Society, performs them this Sunday night at St. Paul's. Subjects and styles range from an adolescent poem she wrote at 17 on the death of her first husband, to the passionate French sonnets that refute allegations that she killed another husband when she was 37. The set ends with a poem written on the morning before her death, marked by swordedged bitterness and religious faith.
