Word: allegretto
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...Students wanted Coke over Pepsi," shrugged John D. Allegretto, HDS purchasing manager...
Interestingly, Kleiber opts for the pizzicato ending of the second movement, like his father. Although scholarship more modern than Erich Kleiber's does not seem to support this novel gesture, it remains a provocative idea. Kleiber also manages to strike a balance between Beethoven's demands for an Allegretto in this movement and the correspondence other conductors note with the Eroica's funeral march...
...Allegretto, Buswell happily obliged all of Bartok's fantastic rambunctiousness. Towards the middle of the movement, in a mostly pizzacato section, he appeared struggling on the border between ardor and desperation. Meanwhile, Levinson conveyed the tremendous weight of the opposing force without any unwieldiness; he again showed his incredible touch during the movement's few moments of soft respite...
...famed reverberation. Even though orchestral entrances are almost always well-synchronized, the subsequent lag time in the hall results in an acoustic clouding that renders the sound more two-dimensional than one might expect. Very exposed passages (e.g. the wind soli at the beginning of the second symphony's Allegretto grazioso) suffer less from the reverberation, and the sheen makes up for the slight lack of warmth. A final quibble: the effect of dynamic contrast is also dulled to a certain extent, with the ends seemingly a bit truncated at both ends of the spectrum...
Eggar's interpretation is most unsatisfactory in the second half of West Side Story. A dream sequence which combines the allegretto movement of Beethoven's seventh symphony, Tony and Maria's courtship replayed as transvestite vaudeville and rather poor lighting leaves the audience more confused than amazed. And in the last two scenes, the catchy songs have all been sung, and the dancing is over. What remains is a rather explicit attempt at rape and Tony's death. Instead of being tragic, these scenes feel sensationalist...