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clarinct and lape, brilliantly played by Richard Wallcr. For Jan DeGae-lani, Pia Gilbert composed Yociano, an elegant and witty parody of vocal styles set to words in a number of near-languages (Nesperanto, so to speak), which brought out unfamil-iar, delightful aspccts of this extraor-dinary singer’s personality. Several works for percussion did not escape the by-now-standard cliches of the medium.

As alw-ays, older “novelties” formed a welcome part of the Aspen experience: for example, Nielsen's Serenata in vano, a fluent Quartet for English Horn and Strings by Jean Franęaix, Hindemith*s splendidly crafted Apparebit repentinn dies for chorus and brasses. Schoenberg’s great String T rio was. played with concentration and security by Sylvia Rosenberg, Karen Tuttle, and Ye-

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ting down from twelve to ten student quartets, and then having two semi-professional cjuartets—on the verge of careers—in residence to act as both coaches and role models.

\Vhatever new directions the Quartet Program may take, one fea-ture destined to remain for years to come is the supportive atmosphere, the infectious warmth pervading the campus. Both Castlemans—genial, el-fin husband and friendly, gracious wife—exude it. And so does everyone else. Perhaps working with gifted young musicians prompts it spontan-eouslv. A remark of Renato Bona-cini's seems to suggest as much. In his thickly accented English, brimming with Italian passion, he seems to sum it all up when he says to a cjuartet he is coaching, “You are all really good kids. You make my chest swell with pride.”

Swell it should. )L\ huda Hanani, and Paul Sperry sang 1'aure’s La bomie chanson (in the string cjuartet version) in truły admirable style. A high point was Shostako-vich’s Tenth Symphony, conducted by Jorge Mester, the Festivars musie director —a performance that brought out all the Mahlerian under-tonesof this massive and tragic work.

Santa Fc: “Rake” & “Daphne”

From Aspen, my itinerary led to Santa Fe, for two twentieth-cen-tury operas: Strauss’s Daphne and Stravinsky’s The Rake^ys Progress. Raymond Ix*ppard'sconducting softened some edges of Stravinsky’s prickly score, reducing the rangę and effec-tiveness of its contrasts. What re-mains in my ear from this performance are the tenor arias, surely some of the most elegant and elocjuent vo-cal writing of the century, sung to near perfection by Jon Garrison. James Morris, though stricken by an indisposition before Act II on August 7, was a strong Nick Shadow, but Elizabeth Hynes was overparted as Annę—sympathetic but often inau-dible; Rosa 1 ind Elias was the proficient Baba. Allen Charles Klein's designs followed sound Ho-garthian lines, and Bliss Hebert's di-rection was generally elear (I did wonder why Father Trulove had been turned into a Bartolo clone—he is, surely a seria rather than a bu/fa figurę).

Daphne, which had its American stage premiere at Santa Fe in 1964, returned as part of a continuing effort on behalf of Strauss (next season will bring Die Liebe der Danae). Upon Joseph Gregor’s turgid libretto, Strauss wove intricate webs of sound, but the mucilaginous tempos and orchestral textures elicited by John Crosby cjuite obscured this most obvious as-pect of the composer’s mastery.

l'he demanding vocal writing did not farę much better, and some of

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Elias as Baba: proficient

the casting left grave doubts in one's mind about Santa Fe’s sense of re-sponsibility towards young singers: Apollo, a part for a Siegmund, is well lx‘yond Barr>' Busse, who is at best a Walther von Stolzing — and Eeu-kippos, about right for a Walther, was really too much for James Ath-crton, one of nature^łs Davids. Atherton, working with a sound tech-nicjue, was wise enough not to over-strain, but the morę erratic Busse sounded at the end of his ropę long before the evening’s end. On August 8, the Daphne, Roberta Alexander, sang under an indisposition (the cast of Im Hoheme had been alerted, as there was no cover for Miss Alexan-dcr). John C>onklin’s set was pictu-resejue; Colin Graham’s direction did li:tle toenliven the static work. It was not one of Santa Fe’s happier eve-nings. MA