Word: bartok
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...Shaham has survived the hazards of prodigyhood to become the outstanding American violinist of his generation. His forthright, incisive playing can be heard at its youthful peak in this remarkable new recording (which also includes Bartok's First and Second Rhapsodies). Shaham's soaring interpretation, at once fiery and nobly lyrical, is a near perfect realization of a modern masterpiece; Pierre Boulez and the Chicago Symphony provide lucid support...
...classical music that we hear in television commercials and Au Bon Pain's front foyer. His allegiance is not to music that is popular, but to music that is earth-shattering. And indeed, the BSO's last concert, featuring Gustav Mahler's Das Lied von der Erde and Bela Bartok's The Miraculous Mandarin, might have been earth-shattering enough to crack fault lines into Symphony Hall...
Expanding on the theme of mortality, the concert opened with Bartok's The Miraculous Mandarin, Bartok's own exploration of life and death. This one act opus was more of a pantomime than a musical suite. In fact, it was almost a miniature play. While there were no actors, no costumes, no sets, there was one staple of drama--an unmistakable storyline. Ozawa took the role of the narrator and the instruments assumed the voices of characters. The Miraculous Mandarin's format was vaguely reminiscent of the children's symphony, Peter and the Wolf. Its plot, however, was drastically different...
...fourth movement, Presto e scherzando presented a direct contrast--with its expulsions of happiness in the form of harmonic and melodic unpredictability--there was, nonetheless, room for moments of sensitive contemplation that the Guarneri String Quartet used in making the piece as cerebral as melodic. Their second piece, Bela Bartok's String Quartet No. 6, presented (as those familiar with Bartok can imagine) a very different effect. Bartok regarded the string quartet as "a laboratory of advancing musical ideas." In this spirit of experimentation, Bartok tested different principles of tonality and deviated from a traditional harmonic structure. The Guarneri String...
...very clear that villains must be repulsively ugly). Moreover, he seems to have absolutely no motivation for his curses. He constantly howls "The Romanovs must be destroyed!" but there seems to be no cause for his interference. Every time he jumps on the scene with his side-kick bat Bartok (Iago with a Southern accent), the movie severely lags. Why should kids fear someone who's more pitiful than scary...