Word: budapester
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1940-1949
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Mozart: Quartet No. 1 in G Minor, K. 478 (George Szell, pianist, with members of the Budapest String Quartet; Columbia, 6 sides). This, Mozart's first try at a piano quartet, is not on a par with his second (K. 493). Szell's playing is a little on the dry side. Recording: fair...
...Budapest put up with him? Director Toth, who had long fought Hungary's indifference to its own composers, Bartok and Kodaly, was willing to fight for Klemperer too. Budapest's orchestras were far inferior to those of Vienna or Paris, and only a top conductor would bring them up again. If Budapest could only bear with Otto Klemperer, there was a good chance that it might get first-class music at last-the kind of music Berlin had heard, 15 years...
...time, Fritz Reiner's swimming got better and bolder. He was given a regular conductor's job in Budapest, then became director of the Dresden Opera, and an authority on Wagner, Richard Strauss, and his own favorite, Mozart. But in the U.S., where he has spent the past 26 years, he has been known primarily as a symphony conductor...
...Budapest expected some eccentricities. Last year, Otto Klemperer arrived at the Hungarian border with only a shaving kit: he had forgotten to bring his luggage or a visa from Prague. He shocked operagoers by making his first appearance in high leather boots, and by removing them right in the middle of his performance. Once, during rehearsal, he became so enraged that he strode over to a violinist, snatched his violin, and crashed it over his head. He fought with his prima ballerina and when her fellow dancers stuck by her, he conducted Die Fledermaus without any ballet. Once...
...night, 41 years ago, the Budapest Opera, had a crisis of another sort. It was nearly curtain time, and the conductor was ill. Who would conduct Carmen? In desperation, the director grabbed the 18-year-old singing coach, and ordered him into the pit. "I had no preparation," says Fritz Reiner of that night. "It was sink or swim. I swam...