Music: Lange’s Own

When Arturo Toscanini rehearses the New York Philharmonic-Symphony he calls constantly into the darkened auditorium where a square-faced, square-shouldered German sits meticulously following each note of the score: “Lange, how does it sound?”

Toscanini’s men know the call well, respect the quiet, firm answers. In case of emergency, dependable Hans Lange is prepared to conduct every program the Philharmonic gives. He has definite turns during each season when he wields the baton at concerts, wins critical praise for his richly varied programs.

Because Toscanini overshadows every conductor who appears in Manhattan, casual concertgoers have exhibited only a lackadaisical interest in his capable, scholarly colleague, born in Constantinople because his father was stationed there as supervisor of the music for the Sultan’s marine bands. But it was a Hans Lange concert last week that aroused more real enthusiasm than any other musical event in the current Manhattan season.

Conductor Lange, on his own, was introducing the Philharmonic-Symphony Chamber Orchestra, sponsored for its first five concerts by enterprising Bennington College. Lange had worked tirelessly all summer compiling his programs, weeding from the mass of rarely heard music which demands a small, highly-skilled orchestra. For his first program he traced back to the 17th and early 18th Centuries before full-fledged symphonies existed, before brasses and drums had any real caste, before there were special conductors but instead, harpsichordists or violinists who set the pace while playing along easily with the other musicians. Amazement was that such gentle, simon-pure music completely captivated a restless Manhattan audience. Few had heard of John Dowland, the great lutanist of his time in England. But they found real beauty in three delicate pieces from his Lachrimae or Seaven Teares. And many were equally impressed by a stately concerto by Giovanni Battista Lully, the versatile Florentine who wrote prodigiously as court composer for Louis XIY.

The evening’s sensation was a set of Fantasias by British Henry Purcell whose death in 1695 deprived England of its greatest musical genius. The Purcell pieces played last week were lightly scored but they were so vital and direct, so tender, so craftily sure that the audience behaved as if it had just heard the percussive Bolero or driving Pacific 231. The final Fantasia, an ingenious weaving around a single note, had to be repeated. Then quiet Hans Lange was thanked time & again for reviving such long-neglected music.