Word: bache
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...familiar while at the same time requiring that it ingest increasing amounts of the new and not so easily palatable. Pianist Leonard Shure opened the series with a completely traditional program of Chopin, Schubert and Beethoven; a week later Jamie and Ruth Laredo deferred to general taste with Bach and Beethoven, but managed to sneak in the somewhat post-Romanticist Sonata Concertante of contemporary Leon Kirchner; last night violinist Felix Galimir and his chamber ensemble (one almost expected the program to read "Felix Galimir and guests") went even further: avoiding the 19th century entirely, the group plunged right in with...
This week the publication of a revised and expanded version of his 1956 book, The Listener's Musical Companion, shows that Haggin, at 66, is as snappish as ever.* "Accepted opinion finds greatness in every note set down on paper by a great composer like Bach or Mozart," he writes. "I hear in some works dull products of a routine exercise of expert craftsmanship. Accepted opinion holds some symphonies and concertos of Brahms to be works of tremendous profundity; I hear in them only the pretension to profundity." Tchaikovsky, Berlioz and Mussorgsky rank higher with Haggin than with most...
...provided us the cornerstone, this time one from his more extroverted second period--the Sonata in A major Op. 47 ("Kreutzer"). But if Shure concentrated on the nineteenth century, the Laredos almost seemed to go out of their way to avoid it. The rest of their program consisted of Bach's Sonata No. 2 in A major and the Sonata Concertante of resident composer Leon Kirchner...
...Laredos' Bach was in the best Rosalyn Tureck tradition. Eschewing the harpsichord for the piano, Mrs. Laredo played lid up and with plenty of pedal. As a pianist myself I have nothing against treating the instrument as a full partner in chamber music rather than a subservient accompanist--in fact I welcome it. But the Laredos' Bach did have severe balance problems. Mr. Laredo very quickly demonstrated a full, rich tone and an easy command of dynamics on the violin. But he was more and more obliged to "force" in an attempt to hold his own against the superior string...
Having bowed to tradition in the Bach, the Laredos proceeded to perform the contemporary Sonata Concertante of Kirchner. This is a long work, full of virtuosic writing for the two instruments. Long, cadenza-like solo passages occur throughout, mostly for the violin. One of these--a broad, violin-spanning "theme" in double stops--opens the work and recurs periodically throughout the sonata's two movements, lending the work a somewhat cyclical character. There is nothing small about this piece, and the Laredos performed it with passion, intensity and brillance...