Word: beethovens
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...Beethoven: The Five Piano Concertos; Six Bagatelles, Op. 126; Andante Favori; "Fur Elise." Vladimir Ashkenazy, piano, with Zubin Mehta conducting the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra; London, 4 CDs. Despite its familiarity, the cycle of Beethoven concertos remains a severe test of mettle for pianists, as well as a handy yardstick for audiences with which to measure them. From the idiosyncratic classicism of the Second, which was the first in order of composition, to the incipient romanticism of the Emperor, the last, is a span of some 20 years but the musical journey of a lifetime...
...speak unimpeded. In the robust First Concerto and the rippling Second, Ashkenazy pays homage to the music's Mozartean wellspring in a clean, carefully articulated reading. The Third Concerto finds him in a more passionate, but still fundamentally classic, mood; the piece was, after all, written around 1800, while Beethoven's teacher Haydn was still alive. The revolutionary Fourth Concerto, in which the piano daringly speaks before the orchestra, gets an introspective, reflective performance in keeping with its contemplative nature. Only in the Fifth Concerto does Ashkenazy's rectitude inhibit him from the kind of large-scale reading the Emperor...
...storage this past winter. "I think this is the right time," he said, when he revealed their existence. "I'm sick of watching those other ones." True devotees greeted the news of the cache as if it were the discovery of a tenth symphony by Beethoven. In September, Showtime, the pay-cable channel, will begin running weekly collections of the newly released sketches, which vary in length from seven to 45 minutes; a year or so after that, Viacom will put them into regular syndication...
...they grew, is to measure the change in public taste. McCarthy treated her Ivy maidens with defoliating wit; Segal bastes his Harvard yardbirds with sophomore-level prose: "The athletic season culminated with the many confrontations against Yale" and "While it was arguable that his interpretation of the complete Beethoven piano concerti was the best thing put on disk during the previous twelve months, it was indisputable that his publicity campaign was nonpareil...
...made of skillfully disguised plaster. Scenes from plays like Goethe's Faust and Lessing's Nathan der Weise adorn the doorways; in the auditorium, the gilt chandelier is topped with the crest of the old Saxon monarchy. It illuminates a mid-19th century musical pantheon that includes Mozart, Beethoven, Gluck, Mendelssohn, Meyerbeer and Spontini...