Word: beethoven
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...There were a "novelty" (Gluck's Alceste) and eight operatic "revivals," some of them works which had been out of the repertory a mere three or four years. Best were those conducted by Bruno Walter: Mozart's Don Giovanni, Beethoven's Fidelio...
Victor's feature release for March is the Toscanini-Horowitz recording of the Brahms B-flat Piano Concerto (Album M-740). Without going into a detailed criticism of the concerto--I for one consider it inferior to the best Mozart and Beethoven concertos--there is no doubt but that it is conceived on as lavish and massive a scale as any work of its kind ever has been since. The profusion of themes, the copiousness of orchestration, the "tiny" sherzo thrown in, the extreme energy bursting forth at every point, all make of it something quite unique in concerto literature...
Less pretentious but in its own way just as enjoyable is the Beethoven String Guartet Opus 18 No. 6, one of the most spontaneous and delightfully humorous of the early quartets, to which the recording by the Coolidge Quartet (Album M-745) does full justice. . . . Also of a genial and unpretentious nature is the Corelli Concerto Grosso No. 11 in B-Flat, in dance suite form, recorded on a single Victor record (No. 12587) by Arthur Fiedler and his Sinfonietta. The finding of this concerto by the scholarly efforts of Mr. Fiedler is typical of the great practical service...
...truth lies far from either extreme. The "Nutcracker Suite" is strikingly beautiful, Stravinski's "Rite of Spring" is horribly realistic with the raw violence of the music matched by a dino saur death battle on the screen, and Dukas' "Sorcerer's Apprentice" is hilariously comic--but Beethoven's "Pastoral" has become a bacchanalian nightmare and the Disney ballet which accompanies the "Dance of the Hours" is scarcely better than a Terry Toon...
...Symphony Hall, Liszt's Faust is to be performed on March 28 and 29. One month later, on April 27, the Missa Solemnis by Beethoven will be sung with Radcliffe. The last of the three appearances will be at one of the annual Pops concerts later in the spring...