Word: brittens
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...piano literature for one hand can pretty well be numbered on the fingers of two. Scriabin, Brahms. Ravel and Strauss all took a shot at it, along with such moderns as Benjamin Britten and Leos Janacek.* The rest of the left-hand repertory is pretty much what the trade calls "knitting music." But a platoon of composers in Holland last week was hard at work on some new and surprisingly engaging left-hand pieces to be played by a recent recruit to the field: 45-year-old Dutch Pianist Cor de Groot...
...lost his arm in a hunting accident, but developed into such a virtuoso that he played three-hand recitals with Liszt; Vienna-born Paul Wittgenstein, who lost an arm in World War I, and commissioned Ravel's Concerto for the Left Hand, two works by Richard Strauss, Britten's Diversions on a Theme...
...Mozart: Divertimento in B flat, K. 287 (V); Prokoviev: Prodigal Son (Vx); Handel: Sonata for Flute and Continuo, Op. 1 #7 (D); Schubert: Die Schone Mullerin (Vx); Britten: Variations on a Theme of Frank Bridge (L); Adam: Giselle; Vivaldi: Concerto in G major for two 'Celli and orchestra...
Still, in the last "official" census among scholars for the most eminent composers of all time, Rossini tied with Benjamin Britten for 59th place; and that isn't doing badly at all. Certainly, one must grant that Rossini had a great talent for melody and for using the human voice superbly (he was a fine professional singer himself). He also knew how to score well for orchestra; no other work of Rossini is orchestrated with such elegance and nuance as Ory. And the bedroom trio in Act II is inspired writing of the first order; Berlioz was quite right...
...Composer Britten, a resident of Aldeburgh (pop. 2,689), likes to write for children-"They find my idiom easier than grownups do, and they don't argue with me. You never find a child saying, 'That note should be F natural.' " He recruited his 5-to 17-year-old chorus from three neighboring schools, gave them three months to learn their lines and six weeks to learn the music. What impressed him even more than their musical aptitude was their anxiety to please. Early in the rehearsal period, he spotted a small boy wearing a duck label...