Word: beethovens
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Wilhelm Backhaus, 70, returned to the U.S. (he was born in Germany and lives in Switzerland) to give his second postwar all-Beethoven piano recital for a full and cheering house...
Mieczyslaw Horszowski, 62, gave the eleventh recital in his back-breaking series of practically all of Beethoven's solo piano music...
Benno Moiseiwitsch, 65, appears in Carnegie Hall to play a program of piano classics (Bach-Liszt, Beethoven, Chopin, Schumann...
These failings did not badly mar the Appassionata or the closing Beethoven Sonata Op. 111, but they seriously detracted from Brahm's Variations and Fugue on a Theme by Handel. This work is rarely performed, partly because of its extreme difficulty and partly because it represents a far more abstract approach than the familiar Variations on a Theme by Paganini. Levy's playing lacked the rhythmic urgency needed to keep the Handel set form foundering, in its own intellectual richness. And a lack of clarity first apparent in the swirling Appassionata finale let Brahms' Fugue become a hodge-podge...
...whole approach not been so modest, it would have seemed almost arrogant to wedge five short pieces by Levy himself between Brahms' gigantic variations and the sublime introspection of late Beethoven. His Piano Pieces Nos. 6, 8, 9, 12, and 18 seemed eclectic in origin, with traces of Milhand, Bartok, and especially John Alden Carpenter. They were clearly organized but almost invariably dull. Yet they did illustrate the same painstaking care that Ernst Levy has lavished on all aspects of his musical art. ROBERT M. SIMON