Word: beethovens
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...contemporary listener, the mystique seems hard to fathom. The core of Toscanini's repertoire was small -- Beethoven, Brahms and Wagner made up 40% of his New York Philharmonic programs; Puccini and Verdi were favorites in the opera house -- and his interest in contemporary music, aside from fellow Italians like Respighi, was almost nil. The famous RCA recordings of the Beethoven symphonies now sound febrile and coarse. Even the conductor's notorious temper and torrents of epithets, which once seemed so romantically apposite -- no musician had really lived until Toscanini called him Porco! (pig) -- come off today as operatic posturing...
Some callers hear snatches of music on machines, from Madonna to Beethoven's Fifth Symphony and even Paul Winter's whale music, a recording of a whale singing. One rooming group entertains callers with their own version of Stravinsky's Rite of Spring; residents "chant-a-long" the message to the music, says Harry Chomsky...
...else is a shambles. The director, Andrei Konchalovsky, has an unique gift for bringing out the worst in good actors. Alan Bates, as Stephanie's composer husband, looks goofy in a Beethoven haircut; Star Pupil Rupert Everett rants and sniffles; Macha Meril, as the Italian maid, provides her own subtitles in moments of distress ("Aiuto! Help!"). And finally the movie exonerates all the rats in Stephanie's life. She sees them happy and united and goes off to die by her favorite tree. Duet for One died long before...
They tried to call the new music "technopop," but it doesn't quite stick. Technopop is disco with a drum machine. No giant musical gap separates Michael Jackson's two big albums, Off the wall and Thriller. No difference exists between disco's Beethoven's Fifth and Hooked on Classics...
...judgment, even if it is still too early to tell how the hall ultimately will turn out. The Boston Symphony under Seiji Ozawa, which performed Mahler's "Resurrection" Symphony * during opening week, bloomed in the new environment, but the Philadelphia Orchestra under Riccardo Muti sounded harsh and edgy in Beethoven's "Eroica" Symphony. Bass Samuel Ramey effortlessly reached the far edges of the balcony in his triumphant January recital, but it took several minutes before Warren Jones, his accompanist, adjusted his touch in order to project each melodic strand cleanly...