Word: brahmsians
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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...Cleveland Orchestra, Erich Leinsdorf conducting; Columbia, 10 sides). Small wonder Brahms wrote to his publishers: "I took much pleasure in the works of Dvořák of Prague." This symphony, actually the sixth of Dvořák's nine, is largely a Brahmsian echo. Performance: good...
...left his school behind. He went on to a preoccupation with 18th-Century counterpoint, and shocked his fellow revolutionaries by having a good word for a romantic composer like Tchaikovsky. In his new symphony, Stravinsky carries his musical vagabonding a step further-blending a kind of Tchaikovskian and Brahmsian romanticism with jazzy rhythms. The Carnegie Hall audience gave it a polite hearing, and several rounds of applause which seemed intended primarily as a tribute to Stravinsky rather than to his symphony. The critics felt the same...
Arthur Footer Suite for Strings, Op. 63 (Boston Symphony, Serge Koussevitzky conducting; Victor; 4 sides). A fresh, well-built Brahmsian piece. Salem-born, Harvard-trained Composer Foote (1853-1937) was a far sounder craftsman than most present-day U.S. composers. Performance excellent, recording good...
...Brahms attain their final fusion, and at the same time their most complete expression. The First Symphony had dangled awkwardly between saccharinely and fustian. The Second was better unified, but its succession of lush themes cloyed one with an overdose of sweetness, while the lyrical Third fell short in Brahmsian power. The Fourth, then, is Brahm's finest work in the symphonic form. It is pretentious, but for me at least, it fulfills its pretensions. As commentators have pointed out, the whole work is steeped in passion, even bitterness. It is a sort of Brahms confessional. I myself am increasingly...
...Martinu quartet. It was dazzlingly clever. As far as I could see, it capitalized on every music sure-fire ever invented: catchy, inclusive rhythms, abrupt changes in tempo, wild polytonality, a string technique which graded off from whole pages of unbearably shrill violin-chatter at some times to a Brahmsian luxuriance at others; to boot, reams of discordant counterpoint and impressively dull masses of sound. The quartet was musical sleight-of-hand personified, and it oozed cleverness. But it didn't ring true. Its themes bickered away in endless mediocrity, in a ceaseless spewing forth of notes and more notes...