Amsterdam Embraces Orchestra And Brahms

AMSTERDAM — Through all the hectic travel, the Philadelphia Orchestra's efforts to explain Brahms to the world could be fully realized only here. Entering the last week of a three-week swing through Europe, the orchestra arrived Sunday to begin an exegesis of the composer's music, his sources, his circle and, incidentally, the orchestra's ability to play the examples.

That had been the goal from the beginning, but few cities had the sponsorship or the will to plunge that deeply into what conductor Wolfgang Sawallisch had envisioned to mark the centenary of Brahms' death. Instead of settling in a few cities to explain it all, the orchestra has dashed from here to there, offering single examples, glimpses of Brahms, the Schumanns and Dvorak, rather than the hoped-for broad perspectives.

Where Cologne had heard in the first week all three programs Sawallisch had plotted, Amsterdam opted for more, thanks to Martin Sanders, the enterprising intendant of the concert hall, the Concertgebouw.

Sawallisch had left Brussels Saturday, ahead of the orchestra, which was basking in a free day after a marathon sweep of five concerts in five cities with only a day's pause. He was accompanied by violinist William de Pasquale, cellist William Stokking, and three members of the Wister Quartet, violinists Nancy Bean and Davyd Booth, and cellist Lloyd Smith.

In Amsterdam, they found the city placarded with announcements of the concerts, something not common on this tour.

They extended the orchestra's presence by a day by playing chamber music in the small, ornate oval hall of the Concertgebouw. The Wister Quartet members were joined by violist Pamela Fay, who had arrived Saturday from Philadelphia specifically to play the Brahms Quartet in A minor.

The prelude began with an hour-long public interview of Sawallisch by Dutch critic Willem Vos. In that hour, before an audience of a hundred or so, Sawallisch called musical life in Philadelphia similar to that in European cities and said he was the heir to a ``fabulous'' tradition begun by Stokowski and maintained by Ormandy and Muti.

Questioned about repertoire, he said he had premiered not so many new works, but had brought forward old masterpieces overlooked by his predecessors. He cited Haydn's The Seasons and Britten's War Requiem.