By ALAN RICH

It was good to hear Earl Kim's music again; I knew him at Berkeley in the late '40s, when I had the job of working the Music Department's only tape recorder and he was already composing deep, dark, moving songs, from which I learned much. Susan Narucki sang his Exercises en Route at the Monday Evening Concert (to begin with a bang what, you gotta admit, was a terrific week for us new-music folks). These are settings of long passages from Samuel Beckett — not so much poems as murky lights that suddenly come on beneath some of his pages. These are songs beyond wonderment; it is as if poet and musician, a continent apart and both in days not far from their last, seem — as Paul Griffiths suggests in an eloquent program note — "to have recognized a companion."

Anyway, it was time to hear Earl's deep, dark, wonderfully intelligent songs; now it's time for our orchestra to look at his Violin Concerto. It bears the curse of being written for a public virtuoso, Itzhak Perlman, but I remember it as being better than that. Narucki, whom I've been admiring for years and never get to write about, has blossomed into a strong-voiced, intelligent singer. Keep her around. This, I am delighted to keep on saying, was a beautifully planned and presented Monday Evening Concert, worthy of the tradition, and well attended, as it deserved. Let it also be noted that except for the visiting star singer, the performing forces were all local. Hurrah for us!!