Word: bachs
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...often gratifying to sit and watch a group of performers who are enjoying themselves, even if their playing and singing is sometimes ragged. The Bach Society Chorus, conducted by Stephen Addiss, contains few exceptional voices, and this is a particular drawback in a small ensemble, where the individual voice quality is quite apparent. But any lack of technique is almost compensated for, by the enthusiam generated when people gather primarily to have a good time singing...
These failings were not overcome after the intermission, but the singing was so spirited that they became less detrimental to the total effect. The final music on the program, an Epiphany Carol by Addiss and the Choral Cantata No. 150 of Bach, required the support of a small instrumental ensemble, which accounted for much of the vigor of the performances. The Bach Society Chorus is a gathering of casual singers, who in their enthusiasm are vicariously, if not always musically, entertaining...
...return to piano recording after an absence of 20 years (she recorded Mozart's "Coronation" Concerto for the coronation of George VI in 1936). During part of that time she was engaged in her monumental harpsichord recording of the 48 rippling, finger-cracking preludes and fugues that constitute Bach's Well-Tempered Clavier, which she called "my last will and testament." When she was persuaded to leave a codicil to that will, she turned again to the piano ("my first love") and to Mozart. She sighs: "Mozart was my first nature-but Bach...
...departed from his one-man show format, which earned him an 849-performance run on Broadway, to use a 42-piece orchestra -but he used it sparingly, and mostly as a collective straight man. On his own, Borge ran the comic gamut from a musician's parody of Bach to a mimic's spoof of Liberace ("Here is an opera Mozart composed for my mother"), keeping his timing uniformly impeccable in keyboard trills, one-line gags ("We have three children-one of each"), mugging, puns, audience squelchers, zany nonsequiturs and pure slapstick. The viewer's first impulse...
Joining her for the first part of the recital was violinist David Hurwitz. After a nicely balanced performance of a Bach aria with obbligato, they presented Gustav Holst's Four Songs for Voice and Violin. Holst wrote these to please a friend who said she liked to sing as she fiddled, but on presenting them to her the composer was told, "I can only hum when I play." As long as two performers are necessary, Holst could have wished none better than Hurwitz and Miss Smith to present his simple, modal settings...