Revelation in Berlin

Berlin concertgoers were showered with more American orchestral music last week than they had ever heard at once before, and found it a treatment, if not altogether a treat. The concert took place in the Music High School, with the West Berlin Radio Symphony Orchestra conducted by Louisville's Moritz Bombard. It was organized by the American Composers Alliance. The capacity audience, including a large contingent of East Berliners, went expecting a program of chaotic and jittery sound, heard instead some very agreeable and orderly music.

Reactions ranged from enthusiasm to bewilderment for works by Henry Cowell, Douglas Moore, Alan Hovhaness, Ulysses Kay, Ben Weber and Wallingford Riegger.

No matter what Berliners' reactions to individual compositions, the concert as a whole opened their ears to the variety of styles in U.S. composition. Wrote Der Tagesspiegel's Critic Werner Oehlmann: "The American music fascinates." Summed up Kurt Westphal in Der Kurier: "This concert offered us treatments which no one had any idea existed in the U.S."

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