Philip Jongeneel wrote: >To me this borders on the outrageous. First of all, Ma Vlast is a >symphonic cycle, and should be performed without intermission...as should >any symphony or similar work. > >Where do you place the intermission? Philip's point of view is well taken. However, I could swear that I heard a radio broadcast some years ago where Rafael Kubelik (someone mildly familiar with Ma Vlast:-) did exactly that--take an intermission halfway through the cycle; between "Sarka" and "From Bohemia's Woods and Fields". >Would the Philadelphia Orchestra program Beethoven's Fifth, for instance, >as the only work for a concert and place an intermission between the second >and thirds movements (better yet beween the third and fourth movements...)? Well, maybe not now, and not for that work. But interrupting the movements of a symphony to include other works was something that had precedent before Beethoven's time, at the very least, not to mention encores of a particular movement that caught the audience's fancy--see some of the accounts of London premieres of Haydn's late symphonies. Bill H.