Word: bombastics
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...evil he has drawn from his imagination. As rape, adultery and warped fear of sex move through the book, tensions are set up. relaxed, and recharged right to the macabre ending. Sometimes Grubb's people speak and act with inspired sureness; at other times they simply deliver bombast. Few novelists overwrite so shamelessly; yet few have the same power to conjure up the forces of darkness...
...prominent side of the Fantasy resembles the dominant tone of the Variations: insistent, clangorous declamation. Since this percussiveness is always transparent and shrewdly manipulates the piano's tone colors, it avoids bombast or irritating din. Declamation forms the backbone of this far-ranging piece through two motives that recur with triumphant resonance, one a defiant, metallic rattle of repeated notes, the other a thunderously rhetorical passage, of two lines roaring together from the outskirts of the piano. The responsive ear will delight in the grating dissonances and, what's more, it will do so even more after repeated listening...
...Symphony, conducted by Fritz Reiner; RCA Victor, mono and stereo). Even in the flood of Mahler-year recordings, Conductor Reiner's brilliant, surgically clean reading of the Fourth is a standout. Under his baton, the massive Mahler sonorities remain remarkably clear and unclotted, and what often smacks of bombast in other performances emerges as music of dignity and grandeur. Soprano Delia Casa sings the folklike melody of the fourth movement with warmth and charm...