Word: beethovens
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...sure, the company's dances bear about the same relationship to authentic folk art as do, say, the Irish Songs of Beethoven. They represent, rather, exalted and stylized kitsch-a form of pop ballet in which folk elements are woven into a formal dance structure created by the company's founder and artistic director, Bolshoi-trained Igor Moiseyev, 64. A prolific choreographer (more than 200 separate works in all), Moiseyev has brought along three new items for the current tour...
Slip the new pop single, A Song of Joy, on the turntable. Surprise. There, for everyone to hear, is the famous unison recitative for cellos and double basses that opens the Ode to Joy from the last movement of Beethoven's Ninth Symphony. Pause. Then comes the languorous twang of a guitar, and a voice begins to sing in accented English...
...maybe it was just that 1970 happens to be the 200th anniversary of Beethoven's birth. A Song of Joy perpetrates structural mayhem upon the original score, and Rios' adenoidal crooning makes Dean Martin sound like Cesare Siepi. Still, it does contain a genuine chunk of Beethoven and someone is definitely listening. From Mobile to Manhattan, pop radio stations are giving A Song of Joy heavy air play. The record is high on Billboard's Hot 100 chart and still climbing. As for Rios, A & M will release his new LP this week and is sponsoring...
...Whichever side one takes on the question of communication with the dead, Rosemary is clearly a musical mystery. There is the music itself, a great deal of it, including, on the new record alone, eight works that she claims are by Liszt, three by Chopin and one each by Beethoven, Schubert, Debussy, Brahms, Grieg and Schumann. The pieces all are characteristic of their alleged composers. Some of them are good enough to have been written by a Liszt or a Beethoven in a nodding moment, though they also suggest the possibility of highly skilled parody. But Rosemary does not seem...
...bananas; Chopin has become a TV addict, though he disapproves of much that appears on the BBC. "When Schubert first appeared to me he was wearing his spectacles but I think it was only to make sure I recognized him. Now he doesn't wear them at all. Beethoven," she adds, shattering nearly everyone's preconception, "hasn't got that crabby look." Even celebrated musical doubters show a grudging respect for Rosemary. "If she is a fake," says British Composer Richard Rodney Bennett, "she is a brilliant one and must have had years of training. Some...