Karl Miller:

>I wonder how many out there really would agree with Tommasini's statement
>about Diamond and Harris Symphonies being inferior to the Shapero.

This is the kind of odious comparison I wanted to avoid, myself.  Even
though I feel strongly about the Shapero, I also consider the Harris 3rd
and the Diamond 4th (to mention the two most identified with Bernstein)
superb works.  Maybe Tommasini got a little carried away (and I think
he may have meant his comment more as a swipe at Bernstein than at the
composers mentioned.) This is not the first time Tommasini has championed
Shapero.  Not so very long ago he listed the Shapero as one of his favorite
post-1945 works, in company with the favorites of the other Times music
critics.  Also, Tommasini may have been thinking, a-historically (?), of
the immense potential Shapero seemed to have back in the 1940's when
Bernstein and Shapero studied together at Tanglewood and later taught
together at Brandeis.  If Shapero had been more tough-minded and
thick-skinned, if he had been encouraged and praised to the degree he
needed and deserved, at a crucial time, if Bernstein had continued to
perform the Symphony for Classical Orchestra, if other things had been the
case...Shapero's overall output might have been staggering.  Instead he
played a lot of tennis while Diamond turned out a lot of symphonies--which
also deserve to be played more, of course.  Harris is long gone, but I am
glad that both Shapero and Diamond have lived long lives and have had their
works celebrated even to the limited degree that has happened.

BTW, I once wrote Bernstein (late sixties or early seventies) urging him
to re-record the Shapero and he responded that the bottom-line climate
at Columbia, even then, would not have made this a possibility.

Jim Tobin