SADYE MOSS REMEMBERED BY ‘ALUMNI’

With the recent death of Lawrence Morton, the concert in memory of Sadye Moss at the Arnold Schoenberg Institute Thursday night took on additional poignancy. Moss and Morton were the driving forces behind Monday Evening Concerts for many years, and to many veterans it seemed fitting that Morton’s final production should be a tribute to his colleague.

The program was modeled on those of the Monday Evening ancien regime, with all that implies in the way of musical motley. It also featured performers described by Institute director Leonard Stein as “Monday Evening alumni.”

The performing star of the evening was undoubtedly tenor Paul Sperry. He sang with easy, chipper grace and clear textual point in “Voyages,” a song cycle by Sadye Moss’ son Lawrence Moss, and the cantata “Meine Seele ruehmt und preist.” The latter, given a curious misspelling and accepted without question in the program as a composition by Bach, is now attributed to Matthias Hoffmann.

“Voyages” consists of six movements composed on typically hortatory texts by Whitman. The accompanying mixed sextet, briskly conducted by Stein, provided atmospheric backgrounds for Sperry’s dramatic work, ranging from almost Wagnerian declamation to bits of quasi- Sprechstimme.

Ingolf Dahl, whose music often appeared on Monday Evening programs, was represented by his “Concerto a tre.” In another of the musical joys of this concert, violinist Dorothy Wade, clarinetist Roy d’Antonio, and cellist John Walz gave this blithe music a well-shaped and balanced reading.

Blooper collectors may wish to record this from the unsigned program notes: Dahl “was often called ‘the sentient Swede,’ for there is a quality of sentiment (not sentimentality) in everything he composed.” That, of course, is what distinguished him from non-sentient Swedes, like Volvos and Wasa Bread.

Pianists Karl and Margaret Kohn have had a long and honorable association with Monday Evening Concerts. They opened the program with earnest, slightly stiff readings of Stravinsky’s Three Pieces and Schubert’s F-minor Fantasy, both for four-hand piano.

Karl Kohn also conducted the small “Bach” ensemble, distinguished largely by an out-of-tune harpsichord.