Word: beethovens
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...theatrics, Erté has always been a prodigiously hardworking artist who, for nearly seven decades, has spent virtually every night, all night, at his desk. He habitually sketches and paints in a dark room under a single spotlight, listening to recordings of Beethoven and Schubert. Since 1935 he has lived in an apartment in the Bois de Boulogne in Paris, with a succession of cats as companions. "Being alone is vitally important for me and my work. I'm like a cat, solitary, independent and quiet by nature," he says. To keep in shape he works regularly with weights...
...been refined into an infinitely supple, responsive ensemble. At first cast in the uncompromising mold of Toscanini, Karajan, 74, drilled his orchestra until its virtuosity was unquestioned. Later Karajan moved toward Furtwangler's ideal of fluidity, and his music making took on a greater spaciousness. In works from Beethoven through Mahler, Karajan knows few peers, and no superiors. In honor of the orchestra's centenary, Deutsche Grammophon in September released a six-volume, 33-disc set of memorable recordings, tracing the Philharmonic from the Nikisch days through Karajan's latest digital recordings...
...time is 1933; the place Frankfurt, Germany. By vocation, Haider is a professor of German classics who also writes novels. He is the sort of man who is appalled by the fact that Goethe refused to send Beethoven money when the composer was in desperate need. Haider's best friend, Maurice (Gary Waldhorn), is a Jewish psychoanalyst. Yet in the course of this drama, Haider erases his conscience like chalk on a lecture-room blackboard. At Good's end, this decent, liberal-minded scholar has become Eichmann's right-hand man at Auschwitz...
...originally planned to play Beethoven's Fourth Concerto. Several weeks ago, however, he decided that that titanic work might be too ambitious for his right hand, still experiencing what he calls "a certain muscular disquietude" from the ailment that crippled it in 1965. His choice instead was César Franck's lovely but less demanding Symphonic Variations for Piano and Orchestra...
...hand does not yet have the stamina and control it once had, but the pianist is convinced that he will soon be performing Beethoven. Delighted to be playing with ten fingers again, he is not altogether unhappy that he had only five for so long. "There is no doubt that what seemed like the end of the world to me in my little life turned into an opportunity for growth, for expansion and a widening of horizons," he says. "It's been enough to make one believe in the justice of fate and destiny." -By Gerald Clarke