Word: celesta
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...minute Concerto for Percussion and Orchestra. Using 64 percussion instruments, the concerto featured five percussion "soloists," whose duties proved so complex that they had to dart about the stage. Among the instruments employed: Chinese gongs, temple blocks, tom-toms, marimbas, vibraphones, Pyrex mixing bowls, a xylophone, a celesta, a glockenspiel. For all its fearsome instrumentation, the concerto proved to be one of Cowell's more immediately appealing works - alternately delicate and boisterous, crosshatched with curiously shifting rhythms. Less stark than the works of Cowell's youth (when he liked to roll the piano keys with his fore arms...
Musically. Britten's Dream was divided into three parts-The Fairies, The Lovers, The Rustics. In the supernatural passages Britten concentrated on fantastical sounds: mysterious tinklings of the celesta, curious patterns of bells, vocal parts accompanied only by harps and percussion. To place the world of the fairies at a clear remove from the world of mortals, Britten wrote the part of Oberon for countertenor (Alfred Deller), a high-pitched, constricted voice never heard in modern opera, and Titania for high soprano (Jennifer Vyvyan). The music of the lovers, on the other hand, was mainly characterized by throbbing, Wagnerian...
Bartok: Music for String Instruments, Percussions and Celesta, and Frank Martin: Petite Symphonie Concertante (Albert Fuller, harpsichord; Gloria Agostini. harp; Mitchell Andrews, piano; Leopold Stokowski conducting; Capitol, mono and stereo). Both Composers Bartok and Martin anticipated the dreams of the stereo engineers by calling for strings divided in equal groups on either side of the conductor. The resulting spread of sound is interesting, but less so than Stokowski's fine performance. Even with a pickup orchestra, his Bartok glows with tonal colors as weird and arresting as an electrical storm, and his vigorous reading of Martin has a fine...