The Music-and-Medicine Man

When a full-time physician gives a violin concert, it's news. When he turns out to be a player of real stature, it's news indeed. This is precisely what happened yesterday afternoon at Paine Hall, where the Harvard-Radcliffe Music Club presented the father-and-son team of violinist Jerome Gross, eminent Cleveland surgeon, and pianist David Gross, a Lowell House sophomore.

Dr. Gross displayed a solid technique, good intonation, a bowing arm that was only occasionally uncontrolled, a full and resonant tone, and a generally imaginative stylistic approach.

His son David has long since left problems of technique far behind. He is completely in the service of the music's content, and yesterday his taste was impeccable. He played well into the keys, and elicited from the piano a superb tone--none of the fortissimos had even a hint of harshness. In short, he played like his teacher, Rudolf Serkin, with all the latter's foot-stamping, too.

The whole concert was just what the doctor ordered. And it is little short of scandal that so few people turned up.