Word: brio
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...Sonatas for Clavier and Violin (Violinist Henryk Szeryng, Harpsichordist Helmut Walcha, Philips; 2 LPs). Several virtuosos have recorded these crystallizations of the baroque sonata style (Oistrakh, Menuhin, Laredo), but none can beat the suave brilliance of this set. Szeryng plays with an impassioned aristocrat's clarity, grace and brio. Walcha, a virtuoso in his own right, is appropriately brought to the fore by Philips' bright tonal presence...
Quintet's tedium is in no way relieved by Altman's film-making technique. In place of his usual brio, the director has used pretentious cinematic gimmicks, monochromatic sets and portentous, dissonant music. He reduces an all-star international cast-Newman, Fernando Rey, Bibi Andersson, Brigitte Fossey, David Langton, Vittorio Gassman-to interchangeable (and often indistinguishable) ciphers. He blurs the perimeters of his images with Vaseline. Though two writers assisted Altman on the screenplay, the witless lines amount to paint-by-number existentialism: "Every time you cheat death, you feel the pure thrill of life...
...strictly allegro con brio as Pianist Vladimir Horowitz celebrated his 74th birthday by hustling to the floor of a Manhattan discotheque. "Sometimes when a performer gets older, he sees only older people in the audience, but I see only young people and that's why I like to go to discos," says Horowitz, who wears earplugs to keep the volume down. Usually Horowitz watches the action from the sidelines, but birthdays are something else. "That was my first gift for my birthday, to be able to dance like that," he gloated, after stomping away with Wife Wanda...
...female driver of the bunch. In more standard comic turns, Saturday Night Live Regular Andy Kaufman brings a saving sweetness to the garage mechanic, who speaks his own variety of fractured English. Danny De Vito barks his way through the role of the dispatcher with a Runyonesque brio. Like the other outstanding show of the new season, WKRP in Cincinnati, Taxi is the handiwork of Mary Tyler Moore alumni. Why doesn't someone give these people a network of their very...
...characters, a naturalistic force and detail in his writing that carried the reader along, however glumly. The movie strips most of that texture away in order to concentrate on the action. The result is a succession of classic genre confrontations carried out by dispirited people, movement without brio or suspense. With all the violent interruptions, it is hard to take the characters seriously. But, since so much of their behavior carries a socially deterministic message, we also can't relax into the mindlessly pleasurable state that a good crime story can induce. We are caught in annoying limbo, made...