Word: brahmses
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`WHO ARE Brahms?" asks an old joke making light of the composer's changing musical idiom. But if the composer had always written music like his three sonatas for violin and piano, the witticism would never have gained currency. Far removed from the composer's youthful sturm und drang, these...
Be that as it may, it is difficult to imagine that Brahms would have approved of the overly pensive performance of the sonata in G major, Op. 78, with which violinist Alan Gilbert '89 and pianist Ben Loeb '88-'89 opened their otherwise fine recital last Saturday night in Paine...
If this recital of all three Brahms sonatas started with a relative whimper, it was to improve continually and finally end with a bang. After their nerves settled down, the musicians together set about their business with a genuine musicality that betrayed no romantic excesses.
The sonata in A major, Op. 100, is Brahms at his most intimate and endearing, and here Gilbert was in top form. Throughout the first movement, marked Allegro amabile, you could see him opening up to the audience, both musically and physically.
The music segued from Brahms to Red River Valley, the language from the Book of Common Prayer to A Cowboy's Prayer, evoking "that last inevitable ride . . ." Such simple touches in last week's memorial service in Washington would have pleased Malcolm Baldrige, who died four days earlier, crushed by...