Word: barshai
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
This carefully tooled engine of mu sic is the Moscow Chamber Orchestra, a group of 22 young, well-tempered muzykanly currently touring the U.S. with a rich repertory that runs from Bach to Bartok. At the wheel is Conductor Rudolf Barshai, 39, a trim violist who organized the group in 1955 at the Moscow Conservatory...
Cast Iron & Silver. Bored with string quartets and big orchestras, Barshai set out to build an 18th century chamber orchestra that he hoped would do justice to the "more profound" composers-Bach, Vivaldi, Handel and Mozart. He found plenty of recruits eager to put up with his tough discipline. To achieve its tight togetherness, the group practices six days a week, eleven months a year. And the work is all the tougher because Barshai insists that all the instruments (save the harpsichord and cellos) be played from a standing position, just as in Bach...
...resultant sound has pleased critics from Novosibirsk to Ann Arbor, where the group opened the Middle Western segment of its two-month U.S. tour last week. The New York Times found Barshai's strings "a core of cast iron overlaid with silver." Later, a three-night stand at Carnegie Hall was sold out-largely because Russia's great father and son violinists, David and Igor Oistrakh, appeared on the program. But Barshai's group did not suffer in comparison...
Bach & Brubeclc. The group's acknowledged skill only emphasizes its relative youth: First Violinist Evgeny Smirnov is 26, while Cellist Yuly Turovsky, the youngest member, has not yet turned 25. Indeed, to look at them, Barshai's wonders could pass for young American jazzniks-especially Bassist Feodor Plyat, 26, who wears horn-rims, and Oboist Evgeny Nepalo, 27, whose lank 6 ft. 4 in. is topped by a brown crewcut. Though it prefers Bach, the group does, in fact, dig jazz. Its preference: the clean-lined cool of Erroll Garner and Dave Brubeck...
| 1 |