Word: beethovens
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...Last week both Klemperer and Los Angeles appeared to have found what they wanted. Klemperer, 48, so tall (6 ft. 4 in.) that he uses no podium, gave stirring vitality to Bach, Stravinsky, Beethoven. He was as exciting to watch as the music he made, quivering his left hand like a violinist until he got the volume he wanted, rocking back and forth for a gentle andante, jerking his head so violently for climaxes that his glasses kept sliding down his nose. Mr. Clark admires Klemperer so much that he hurried back from Europe for last week's concert...
...hunt was on in New York last week for the kind of chair Beethoven used when he played the piano. It had to have short, strong legs to suit a heavy, stumpy little man like Beethoven, a comfortable back so that the player could sit relaxed and let his shoulder muscles work for him. Nowhere in New York was such a chair to be found. Pianists like Rachmaninoff and Iturbi who depend mostly on their wrists use stools without backs. Paderewski and Hofmann who play more from their shoulders use chairs with backs which tip forward a little. None...
Whether or not the Beethoven chair contributed to Artur Schnabel's performance last week there were few people in his audience who did not go away feeling that they had listened to the greatest of Beethoven pianists. Schnabel had played the difficult Fourth Concerto easily, quietly, without once tossing his head or flinging his hands ostentatiously into the air. For his audience he made Beethoven all-sufficient-with the clarity of his phrasing, the prismatic shading of his tone color, the way in the second, slow movement he carried on a dialog with the orchestra, pleading tenderly with...
Seven times the applause brought him back to the stage to make stiff, pinched little bows. But his face was beaming. U. S. audiences had not behaved that way when he played Beethoven to them eight years ago. They had regarded him as cold, academic; his programs seemed too heavy. Back he went to his pupils in Berlin who revere him the way Elman and Heifetz revere the late great Leopold Auer.* Criticized for having no show pieces on his programs, Auer once remarked that he left all those to his pupils. Schnabel's pupils play all the modern...
...Last spring Adolf Hitler's campaign against the Jews drove Schnabel from Berlin but when he was invited to visit the U. S. again he was as uncompromising as before about his programs. He would come but he would play only Beethoven. He would not play encores for the sake of sending any audience away with a marshmallow taste in its mouth. On no account did he want a long tour which might let him get stale. He preferred to play with orchestras, although orchestra fees are always lower than those for individual recitals...