The Boston Globe from Boston, Massachusetts • 140

Boston Sunday Globe November 23. 1S63 MICHAEL STELNBERG RAP-UP 42-A End to a joyful era John Denver, 'Aquarius' i i 1 til' hi Is woman wrote me in great surprise saying 'Why do you carry such a record as "Aquarius' in your store? My daughter bought a copy and it has dirty words on So, even though it's our best selling record, we're not going to carry it." The second letter said, "Our 15-year-old daughter ran away from home and after we discovered she had left we discovered a copy of 'Aquarius' on her bed. This is the kind of filth that makes 15-year-old girls run away from home." Lotsa discoveries in that one. The third letter said, like, "We scrimped and saved and brought our daughter to N.Y.C. for a vacation and brought her to see And after we got home, we bought her the album, because she talked about it so much.

"And then she died. She had been ill a long time. So we had engraved on her headstone, 'Jiet the sun shine in'. And we thank you very much for producing that record." The tough part, see, Fred, is that the last parents were the only ones who mentioned doing anything for their kid, including trying to dig her. And they lost her.

Let the ruddy sun shine in. That really stomps me on my aorta. This I have looked up: there are about 100 single releases, 71 LP's with "Hair" music, and more than 20 albums completely devoted to the musical, including seven original cast albums. Gross sales of all recorded "Hair" music is now in excess of $20 million. The rest of my notes on John Denver are not memorable.

By Gregory McDonald, Globe Staff John Denver's voice is, just as we thought from talking to him, probably too thin and high for a single, but useful to a trio. His articulation is great, and his back-up music is exciting, or maybe I'm just wierd about French horns this year. As a writer, he's no Dylan but his "Leaving On A Jet Plane," as recorded by Peter, Paul and What's Her Name is leaving a vapor trail coast to coast. Anyway, after years of being with the Chad Mitchell Trio this kid from Texas Texas Tech yet), Alabama and other points hot, this Air Force brat, at 25, has released his own album, "Rhymes ic Reasons" for RCA (LSP-4207). And, as above, it makes good listening.

It's new-pro-kid, you know? So we sat down with him in some cheesey cafeteria, blonde, brown-eyed, big cheekbones, to do the cabbages-and-kings bit. To my surprise, he told me this story, which I didn't get in my organizational notebook, about three letters received by the president of RCA, whose name I'll be danged if I'll look up. About "Aquarius," the big RCA seller this year. The prexie read these letters during a big sell-sell RCA conclave in Mexico City, to which I wasn't invited, of course, because I'm apt to be rude about sell-sell, hct dog. Well, when Denver told me those three letters, third hand, in this cheesey cafeteria, I got teary (I get teary over Disney, in case I never told you before) because sell-sell, to tell the truth, always makes me crumple.

The first letter said something like, "A JACKIE GLEASON is featured in "Don't Drink the Water," the fit version of Woody Allen's stage comedy. It also stars Estelle Parsons, and opens Wednesday at several theaters including the Orpheum. Arts Council contest down to 10 finalists consists of soprano Helen Boatwright, violinist Rudolf Kolisch, violist Walter Trample composer Gunther Schuller, music editor Kurt Stone and Barry Tuckwell, principal French horn with the London Symphony. violinists, and evidently found that given, first, his own almost indecent amount of energy and, second, the curtailed schedule of the aging Quartet, that he could combine his Budapest life with at least some of his others. The Budapest started out in the 20's as a three-quarters Hungarian group, the other 25 percent of it being Dutch.

Roisman, who joined originally as second violinist, was Russian, and when Kroyt and Alexander Scheider joined in the early 30's, that made the Quartet a completely Rus-sion Jewish one. 1 recall Kroyt's telling me that after he joined, the Quartet had never played in Budapest; in fact, I think I recalll hearing that except for Roisman, none of the players had even been there. I met Kroyt just twice, and only briefly. The first time was at Marlboro in 1964 (we shared a score of the Schoenberg Chamber Symphony at the dress rehearsal of a performance prepared and led by Rudolf Kolisch), and once in 1966 in Buffalo, where the Budapest had some sort of residency at the university. It was an evening that ended with the Kroyts driving us to our hotel in an absolutely awesome vehicle, about the size of a motor launch, furnished in rich blues, frighteningly quiet, and representing a life style I had not associated with the playing of chamber music.

I remember, too, a man of rare warmth, charm and humor, who spoke generously, perceptively, and with pleasing irreverence, about his colleagues in the musical world. That night in Buffalo he reminisced about the collisions of egos during the preparations for the Berlin premiere of Schoenberg's "Pierrot lunaire," in which he had played violin and and in which the pianist and cellist were Artur Schnabcl and Gregor Pia-tigorsky. Kroyt's warmth and charm came as a surprise because on stage he made a remarkably severe impression. Alexander Schneider was ebullient, his brother somehow rather slyly good-humored; Roisman was elegant, aloof, unsmiling, but Kroyt was not merely unsmiling, but seemed downright grouchy. Perhaps I should have known from his playing, which, in its best years, was gorgeous in tone and with a marvelous glow.

Ticket sale for 'Lovers' at Boris Kroyt, the violist of the Budapest String Quartet from 1932 until the group stopped playing in public about four years ago, died eight days ago at 72. As Henry Raymont wrote in the New York Times, "to thousands of chamber music devotees Mr. Kroyt's death marks the end of a joyful musical era that spanned almost three decades." That Kroyt got a bylined obituary in the Times shows the special place the Budapest Quartet held in American musical life. The Quartet played in New York (at the Y.M.H.A. and later at the Metropolitan Museum) and in Washington (at the Library of Congress) more than anywhere else, but they toured energetically and widely, and there is a whole generation of people now in their 30s and 40s who first "learned" their Mozart, Beethoven, Schubert and Brahms Quartets and Quintets from Budapest recordings.

The lineup by which most of us will remember the Budapest, and the one with which it did its greatest playing, was with Joseph Roisman as first violinist, Kroyt as violist, and with the Schneider brothers, Alexander and Mischa, on second violin and cello, respectively. That came into being when Kroyt replaced a Hungarian violist named Ipolyi, and it remained until 1945, to be restored once more in the last few years of the Quartet's existence. Alexander Schneider was restless, and he left in order to do solo work, to become involved in more varied sorts of chamber music, to conduct, to redis-over and organize Pablo Casals, and to start a quartet of his own in which he played first violin. He returned to the Budapest, which meanwhile had gone through two other second THRILL-SPECTACULAR FINAL SHOW TODAY 1:30 PM LA BRITISH TOURNAMENT and TATTOO GOOD SEATS NOW MASSED BANDS, PIPES DRUMS THE ROYAL SCOTS GREYS AND GORDON HIGHLANDERS A THRILLING MILITARY DISPLAY JSIIUBERT 265 Trimont St. ALL EVES.

MATS. Broadway hits. She also has done screenplays and next Spring his new movie, Out-of-Towners," starring Jack Lemmon and Sandy Dennis, will be released. The director of the upcoming Colonial production is Robert Moore, who The best years were long over when the Budapest stopped playing. It is a wonderful experience now to go back to some of the earlier recordings and to rediscover just how the Budapest made its claim on the affection and admiration of its huge audience.

The sound is silkily lovely (though the Columbia recording harden it rather), and it had a rather special character because Rois-man's tone was exceedingly delicate in striking contrast to the more robust, dark-hued playing of Kroyt and the Schneiders. The playing does not often tell you anything new about the music, but it always gives you the music whole, perceived and executed with the utmost in refinement, elegance and taste, and with the most delightful and delight-giving vitality of discourse among the voices. Columbia recently has reissued the 1951 recordings of Beethoven's Opus 18 Quartet and will, I hope, follow through with the middle and late ones as well. There are many young people who are a bit puzzled by the Budapest's reputation, which they cannot reconcile with the often wayward tone and intonation of the later recordings, and the reissue of some of the Budapest's European recordings the Budapest moved to America in 1938 would be something really ear-opening and exciting. Those recordings, which appeared in American on Victor, are EMI property, and perhaps Angel-Seraphhim can restore some of those extraordinary (and well-reordered) performances: Beethoven's Opus 130, Haydn's Opus 54, No.

1, the Bartok 2nd, Wolf's Italian Serenade, the Brahms flat Quartet and the major Quintet (with Alfred Hobday), and others some pre-Kroyt even. A 5tli week for 6de Sade' "De Sade," film portrait of the notorious Frenchman, has been held a fifth week at the West End Cinema. Keir Dullea, Senta Berger, and Lilli Palmer are starred with John Huston, who makes a guest appearance as the abbe. society Thom Dunn, Mure Fri Oecmber 1J Dfcemb.r 14 Symphony Hall 1:00 p.m. Gaorq.

rid.nc Ha1) Messiah Apnl 12. lw. at Cent Garaani Bo.oulf Mary soprana At; ForSunato. J.r-ie, P'C'fJ tenor John bm eoy soprano at Symphony MaJI Boa Offict (2-l2i Pmcm: 7 00. 00.

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Boston ittifi 7951 A Frank Connelly Presents NOV. 29 5 P.M. The ROLLIHG STONES with C. B. KING TERRY REID SEATS NOW! BOX OFFICE OPEN $7.50, 6.50S.50, 4.00.

Mail Orders Accepted. Include self-addresced stamped envelope. The Colonial Theater box office will open at 10 tomorrow for the sale of tickets to Neil Simon's new pre-Broadway comedy, "Last of the- Red Hot Lovers." The comedy will play for three weeks only, Dec. 1 through 20. Matinees will be Thursdays (Dec.

4 and 11), Saturdays (Dec. 6, 13 and 20) and Wednesday (Dec. 17). "Red Hot Lovers" stars James Coco who scored a success last season in which was double-billed with "Adaptation." In this latest comedy, Coco portrays a married man involved with three women Linda Lavin, Marcia Rodd and Doris Roberts none of whom is his wife. Saint-Subber is the producer and it is his fifth Neil Simon comedy.

Simon, in less than a decade, has written eight All Saints Church, Brookline 1773 Beacon St. 75th Anniversary Concert Music by Brittn, Bch, Dvorak Ccili Society nd Church Choir Donald Tatttri, Conductor TODAY at 4 P.M. TICKETS 12. at door Colonial scored successes with his first two ventures, "The Boys in the Band" and "Promises, Promises." After its Boston engagement, "Last of the Red Hot Lovers" will travel to Broadway and premiere Dec! 28 at the Eugene O'Neill Theater. BEACHCOMBER Wollaslon Blvd.

Quincy 7 ACT REVUE YVONNE MORAY Th Lifrl Miss of Comtdy TOMORROW MONDAY I NIGHT ONLY WOODY HERMAN arid' his 15-PIECE ORCHESTRA Reservations GR 9-8989 NEXT TERRLNCEMcNAlly Ten finalists have been chosen for the "Young Musicians: Performance in Prospect" program sponsored by the Massachusetts Council on the Arts and Humanities. More than 50 applicants auditioned. Each of the four winners will receive $1000 in performance fess and three oportunities to play in Massachusetts in recital and with symphonic or chamber ensemble. Finalists are singers Gretchen d'Armand and D'Anna Fortunato, pianists Pola Baytelman, Craig Smith, Virginia Eskin and Jerri Onaran; String players Carol Paine and Cecylia Dickson; and the Cambridge Brass Quintet and the Festival String Quartet. All musicians are Massa- -chusetts residents between the ages of 20 and 30.

For the finals, each program must include a work by an American composer under 33. The awards will be presented Sunday, Dec. 14, at Jordan Hall, following the final auditions which will begin at 10 a.m. The public is invited to auditions and award ceremonies. Pianist Claude Frank will chair the jury, which GfcflStJ AND HILARITY, i -HE i.

Y. I i ll I 1 I Graffman for today Piamst Gary Graffman's first Boston recital will be held this afternoon in Jordan Hall. His program lists the Schumann G. minor Sonata, Op. 22, Beethoven's "Appassionata" Sonata; Haydn's major Sonata and the Brahms Variations on a Theme of Paganini.

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