Music Critic of the Boston Globe Finds Kreisler Concert Success

The Harvard Glee Club concert at Symphony Hall Friday evening was an unqualified artistic and financial success. The capacity audience was doubtless partly attracted by the assisting artist, Fritz Kreisler, but the singing of the Glee Club was of the same high order as his playing.

It is without precedent for an American college glee club to attempt a concert program like the one Dr. Davison chose for Friday. In fact, no chorus ever heard in Boston, except, perhaps, the Vatican Choir last fall, has set a higher standard in its choice of numbers and its performance. The selections ranged from austere classics like Palestrina, Vittoria, Lotti, and Bach to modern romanticists like Brahms, Borodine, and Granville Bantock. The technical and interpretative resources of the chorus could hardly have been subjected to a more searching test, but the singers conquered the difficult counterpoint of "Adoramus Te" and the equally difficult chromatic harmony of "The Lady of the Lagoon" triumphantly.

It was hard for listeners familiar with the work of amateur male choruses to believe that these singers were not any of them professionals. Their attacks were crisp and accurate, their phrasing correct, their tone beautifully rich and mellow, and their diction readily intelligible without reference to the words printed in the program.

Today the Glee Club, despite the forebodings of those sceptics who said such a thing was impossible, is now on equal terms with any chorus in America. PENFIELD ROBERTS '16,   Music Critic for the Boston Globe