Word: beethovens
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...understands what is going on in Wagner's orchestra, Tristanfrom beginning to end is a blaze of emotional excitement; and if one understands what is going on in the orchestra ("dancing-place" of the Chorus) in the Agamemnon, the blaze of intellectual excitement is almost unbearable... As if Beethoven, a poet of comparable dimensions, had written three, or four, expository cadenzas stating the thematic content of the whole work in the first movement of a violin or pianoforte concerto...
...program which Adams House presented on Wednesday night seemed at the start totally miscellaneous. The Beethoven Violin Sonata, Op.96, opened it, the Schoenberg String Trio, Op. 45 followed, and the second half plunged into the electronic music of Cage, Mache and Schaeffer. But all the pieces closely complemented each other, for the modern works were all intent upon evoking a sense of enigmatic direction, of thoughtful uncertainty, and the Beethoven at least approached them by using an unusual formal scheme. Listening to all this raised the important question of what should determine taste within so free a style...
...performance of the Beethoven was also good. Ursula Oppens, piano, and Tison Street, violin, created excellent balance between themselves and, while Street was somewhat uncertain in the upper register, they had generally fine technical control. Their exploration of their instruments' sonorities made the second movement particularly moving...
...they neglected an important formal element in the last movement. Beethoven speeds through the primary section, keeps skidding through several more quite different areas and stabilizes the movement only when he lands in an unusual Adagio section; the movement then bolts from this mood and returns to its unsettled roving. The performance, however, settled down in the first section, and the unrooted character of the movement was lost...
Sympathetic Barbers. In its growth, the symphony orchestra is now a voice that is more distinctively American than any other in serious music. Its repertory is top-heavy with German works (Beethoven is played nearly twice as much as Tchaikovsky, the most popular non-Germanic composer), and it has no hampering patriotic duties to the national culture: it plays very little music writ ten in its own land. But its hybrid birth and its international spirit spare it the national mannerisms that mark most European orchestras, and it plays with a freshness and flexibility that make each orchestra unique...