Word: allegretto
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...Allegretto Con Amore. It is as if Liszt or Paganini had returned from the grave. Everyone in the hall's 2,760 seats rises and gives the 61-year-old pianist a standing ovation before he has played a note. He rushes to the piano and begins. The lean, intense face seems to exhale a melancholy all its own, but the fingers are as joyous as they were in the old days. The Chopin sings; the opaque, psychedelic visions of Scriabin are somehow made lucid. A critic calls him still a monarch. His wife is overjoyed...
Most electrifying were the technically imposing passages. Castleman soars through the harmonics and arpeggios, and eats up such frights as bowing legato and plucking (with the left hand) simultaneously. His intonation rarely wavers; at one point in the Allegretto he romps into a high E perfectly. A crucial disappointment, however, was the lack of a big sound when he needed it. The two climaxes of the second movement depend upon massive crescendos, which the soloist was unable to provide. Lack of a real forte, plus a general timidity with rubato, occasionally impeded a very impressive performance...
Aside from excessive volume, the orchestra handled the complex score amazingly well. Especially delightful was the clarinets' witty opening of the Allegretto, the tuba's blustering fifths in the first trio, and the fine horn ensemble at the end of the first movemnt. The Bach chorale and its successive variations were somewhat less than serene; but the transition to Baroque harmony and sublime peace ("My Jesus comes--farewell world"), from twelve-tone sufferings does demand incredible skill...
...other triumph of the evening was Mozart's "Jupiter" Symphony, No. 41. The HRO displayed its impressively solid strings and wood-wind ensemble. Senturia followed a sharp initial attack with a fine, deliberate tempo. He concluded the fun of the third movement (Allegretto) with a stately allargando. And in the fugal stacking of themes at the final coda, he delineated each important voice...
...Killing tempo, and it ended up wounding him; the first movement was too fast. While he had never swelled beyond a forte in the first two numbers of the program, here he used his six-foot build to advantage: the Steinway really stomped. Again in the third movement, an "Allegretto," Boyk travelled presto. As a result, he had to stretch rhythms at the crucial transitions. But the music's momentum carried the listener through in one long dash to a brilliant conclusion...