Word: bombastics
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...Honegger of the evening is a late and little-known Concerto da Camera for flute, English horn and strings. Unlike the tense and rigid bombast of his earlier works (notably the symphonies and the oratorios), the concerto is a relaxed, graceful, spacious and thoroughly un-neurotic work. The mood is pastoral but placid--suggesting, in Dr. Johnson's phrase, not an unkempt meadow but a well-rolled English lawn...
...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...
...style capitalism as immoral because, so he said, the few become rich by the labors of the many, "counter to men's conscience." But Nikita Khrushchev's farewell address, like his farewell press conference and his approach to the U.S. in the final days, was free of bombast and bluster, and characterized by a roughhewn folksiness. Said he: "I am glad of this opportunity to speak to you before my departure. We liked your beautiful cities and wonderful roads, but most of all your amiable and kindhearted people...