Word: baton
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1930-1939
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...briefest of little bows, his left hand on his hip, his baton tapping smartly on the nearest violin stand and the audience was still, ready for another Toscanini miracle. For a second he closed his eyes. Then his baton cut sharply into the air. First passage was for the violins. The Maestro's stick seemed suddenly to become a violin bow playing tenderly across imaginary strings. His left hand molded phrases, shot up like a policeman's warning to keep the pianissimos. Most conductors make an elaborate show of signaling to the different players, whipping up climaxes. Toscanini...
...French Morocco, another springs up to take his place. Two of the greatest of these blue-cowled die-hards were the Brothers El Hiba and Merebbi Rebbo Mehammedan of the south, sometimes called "The Blue Sultan,"* sometimes "The Saint." Nabbed in 1917 by the French, El Hiba passed his baton on to Brother Merebbi. For 16 years Merebbi's home has been the wide Moroccan Desert and the passes of the Atlas Mountains. By day he has worn dust on his tongue, sand in his eyes, and in his heart the resolve to wrest Morocco from the Christians. Last...
...pudgy little man in a grey pullover sweater stepped up on the dais at the Philadelphia Academy of Music one day last week and. bracing his shaking knees, picked up a baton to rehearse the proud Philadelphia Orchestra. The players greeted him politely but on many a stony face was a look of dark suspicion. They were tired of guest conductors and this one was a pianist. But José Iturbi also used to be a boxer and he would not be glared down. He smiled a disarming smile and set the musicians to work with the authority of their...
...weeks and still the Mexicans wanted more. He itched to try conducting. Because there was no assembled orchestra available he put an advertisement in the newspapers. For his first Mexican concert he hired 40 players. By the time he reached the 29th concert he had no musicians under his baton. When he returned to New York in the summer he conducted the Philharmonic in the Stadium series (TIME, Aug. 21). Twice the audience rose to cheer him. But Iturbi well knew when he went to Philadelphia that a formal winter engagement would be a stiffer test, that success depended largely...
...public performance Iturbi merely clenched his baton a little tighter and with the simplest of gestures led the men on to do what he had taught them at rehearsal. But the music was so articulate, the Mozart so sparkling, the Rhenish Symphony of Schumann so gravely romantic, that in intermission the lobby was abuzz with the talk of this coming young conductor. The program went on with Debussy's La Mer, the Intermezzo from Granados' Goyescas, three dances from De Falla's Three-Cornered Hat. At the end the audience was on its feet cheering. The players...