Word: brilliante
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...surprise that the Academy of St. Martin-in-the-Fields has become the mantra for quality on classical music radio stations across the world. Their brilliant performance at Symphony Hall last Friday is nothing if not evidence of the high standard they maintain...
Bach's Orchestral Suite No. 2 is similar to the concerto, and featured flutist Jaime Martin as soloist accompanied by orchestra. A collection of dances composed in the French style, the Suite was clearly the most brilliant piece on Friday's program. With no conductor, the music seemed to come straight from the performers without an intermediary...
Monteverdi is a brilliant tactician; he bases just about all the Vespers music on the ancient traditon of Gregorian chant. Surely that will appeal to conservative church authorities. And he shows a dazzling musical variety in doing so; surely that will impress the musical world. And he intersperses the psalms and canticles with the very latest things, little concertos or motets for solo voices, displaying the fabulous virtuosity that the Mantuan singers, under Monteverdi's direction, were capable...
Someone came up with the less-than-brilliant idea of slapping a '50s-retro veneer on all the singers' clothes and gestures. Rigoletto in hat and coat recalls Willy Loman with a hump; Gilda sports a flaring gray poodle-skirt, a bright red cardigan sweater and ponytail tied with a matching red ribbon. The duke, when he comes a-courting, looks sublimely ridiculous in a red monogrammed vest. Even the courtship scene between the duke and Gilda is straight out of the '50s, reminiscent of that porch swing on a summer night--a worthy tradition...
That strange and sometimes brilliant testament aside, Sam Tanenhaus has now written the best biography that Chambers is likely to receive, Whittaker Chambers (Random House; 638 pages; $35). Tanenhaus' account, essentially sympathetic, is patient, admirably balanced and fascinating in its rich detail. On the great litmus question of postwar politics--which of them was telling the truth?--Tanenhaus is clear. Walking again through all the familiar elements of the case (the Woodstock typewriter, the Bokhara rug, the prothonotary warbler, the famous Pumpkin Papers), Tanenhaus shows, if anyone still doubts it, that Alger Hiss was lying...