Word: beethovens
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Sonatas for cello and piano by Beethoven and Francoeur (1698-1787). Free. Friday, March...
...BEETHOVEN'S Missa Solemnis has a formidable reputation. It poses extraordinary difficulties for performers, and manifold complexities for listeners. More talked-about than played, the Missa is still forbidden territory to many music lovers, even though Beethoven himself once dubbed it his "most successful" work. But a performance like the one conducted by F. John Adams last Friday night can prove that this mass is a moving and uplifting expression of man's relationship to God, and to His universe...
Composed when Beethoven, never a particularly graceful vocal composer, had long been deaf, the Missa Solemnis reflects its composer's implacable unwillingness to make allowances for performers' limitations. The soprano part, abounds with sustained Forte. As and B flats. Often called upon to sing Fortissimo for long passages, Adams's choir coped with their hard-to-negotiate vocal lines courageously, and by and large, successfully. The balance was usually fairly good, with the men tending to outweigh the women at times. A large measure of the success of this performance was due to the sensitivity with which the choir responded...
...right, accompanied by a strong-bodied assistant whose thin, darkish face showed him to be a resident of the town. The Catholic priest was white, a Maryknoll missionary who had lived in the village for almost 10 years. From a small speaker on the wall an organ version of Beethoven's "Ode to Joy" was playing. As the padre walked to the modest altar, his assistant passed out to the peasants sheets with prayers written in Quechua. This service was for those who spoke only that Indian tongue; in the previous hour the padre had said mass for the Spanish...
...DEAF COMPOSER from the 1800s and a sage from 25 centuries ago seem strangely inoffensive targets for the Chinese, even on the verge of a New Cultural Revolution. After all, both Beethoven and Confucius are subjects for personal interpretation, reflection and appreciation, and, of course, both are dead. So for China-watchers, most of whom are reluctant to accept the ends, the means of China's Hell-for-the-Revolution-of-it policy grew more confusing with the recent attacks on the sage and the composer. The enemies of the often-paranoid Chinese have never been more elusive...