Word: brahmsian
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1960-1969
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...first half of the program thrust us into intermission in the wake of a rather dreadful anticlimax, the Suite in B-flat for thirteen winds by Richard Strauss. This childhood product suffers from the uneasy mixture of a strong Brahmsian influence with overly thick scoring in all but the last movement. The work occasionally possesses a deep sable ambience characteristic of Strauss and is permeated with his incomparable horn writing, but the material is for the most part as boring as a bog. Strauss' penchant for opaque writing, as if he feels guilty when someone isn't playing, only redoubles...
Lassus' Psalmus Poenitentialis sounded like the least well-prepared work on the program. Instead of paying meticulous attention to the clarity and independence of each part, conductor Elliot Forbes treated the audience to gorgeous but amorphous Brahmsian sonorities...
...Mozart-Sussmayr Requiem complete, Adams had Robert Levin compose an Amen fugue to follow the sequence Dies irae. Levin's fugue was based on fragments left by Mozart which Sussmayr, for some obscure reason, preferred to leave untouched. Brief but masterful and prodigious, the fugue sported a long Brahmsian timpanum roll which acted as a tonic pedal bringing the fugue to conclusion. It was another plume for Levin's many chapeaux...