Word: beethoven
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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From Kitchen to Dining Room. Yamash'ta is determined to transform "the kitchen" (musicians' derisive label for the percussion section) into a dining room. "If I play Beethoven's Fifth 500 times in my life as an orchestra percussionist, what have I achieved?" he says. Adds Composer Tircuit: "What can a percussionist possibly do with a bass drum that will be interesting for any length of time? We've got to try to find a way to write pieces that are musically meaningful...
...live in a cacophonous age," says Saul Goodman, principal timpanist with the New York Philharmonic, another recognized master of the craft, "and people look for something more than Bach, Beethoven and Mahler. Percussion playing and writing seem to fill that desire...
...selling. For an Oregon brewer they campaigned to "Keep Times Square Green"-with Oregon trees; for Paul Masson brandy they knocked vodka ("If you can't see it, taste it, or smell it, why bother?"); for a San Francisco FM radio station they dreamed up the Bach and Beethoven sweatshirts that swept the country...
Died. Wilhelm Backhaus, 85, German patriarch of concert pianists and the century's foremost interpreter of Beethoven; of a heart attack; in Villach, Austria. When Backhaus was eight, the noted pianist-composer Arthur Nikisch wrote to him that "whoever plays the great Bach so well when so young will surely make his way later on." The assessment was overly modest. In a career spanning three generations, Backhaus won acclaim for his masterful interpretations of virtually all the great composers. But his deepest dedication was to Beethoven, whose sonatas he played with great clarity of style and breadth of emotion...
...instance, were left on display on his desk. The only thing he nationalized was the theater, mainly to ensure that parts would be equitably distributed among actors. When he felt his popularity slipping, he staged a spectacular at the Munich opera house. Bruno Walter, then resident conductor, led a Beethoven Leonore Overture. A chorus sang a hymn composed by Eisner, ending "O world, rejoice!" But when he tried to speak, the audience heckled Eisner off stage. Two months later he was shot to death by a youthful assassin who wanted to prove himself worthy of a new anti-Semitic political...