The premiere of Whitman Cantata occurred as climax to tonight's too-long program in the jam-packed Avery Fisher Hall in the middle of a heat wave. I will never forget the sight as, slowly, close to a thousand men emerged onto the stage like a haemorrhage to intone this work with twelve brass and timpani. What did I learn? That the instrumental group could more than hold its own against a thousand voices, and that a thousand voices are not ten times louder than a hundred, only ten times hazier. The most beautiful sounds were the hushed dewy unisons.