Word: chopine
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Almost inevitably, The Goldberg Variations invites comparison with Robbins' Dances at a Gathering, another lengthy "pure" ballet that was set to some piano pieces by Chopin. Robbins himself refuses to play the game. "I am not in a contest with anything," he says, and insists that it was only by chance that his last two major ballets were both inspired by keyboard works. Clearly, though, Dances is in every sense a Romantic work-open, playful, exuberant, instantly approachable. Variations is far more formal and classic, and far more demanding as well...
...read Virginia Woolf. Not only that, he would presumably prefer Jayne to Katherine Mansfield ("I doubt if there will be a really exciting woman writer," he once said, "until the first whore becomes a call girl and tells her tale"), and he has probably never even heard of Kate Chopin. Considering his utter lack of knowledge about women writers, his declaration about Lawrence is more than arrogant; it is nonsense...
Josef Hofmann: Works by Chopin, Liszt, Mendelssohn (Victrola). A superstar born in 1876 to the grand romantic tradition. Hofmann never officially released a commercial studio recording after 1924. In May 1935, however, when he was still at peak form, Hofmann made some test recordings for Victor, now released for the first time. The sound is uneven, but the first movement of Chopin's B-Minor Sonata is a matchless example of the controlled give and take he brought to large-scale works. The Chopin-Liszt Maiden's Wish shows how delicate he could be at painting musical miniatures...
...matter how miserable his actual life, the classical composer tends to suffer in a new way on film. Cornel Wilde as Chopin in A Song to Remember; Stewart Granger as Paganini in The Magic Bow; Toralv Maurstad as Grieg in Song of Norway-all were grotesque travesties. Thus The Music Lovers is merely the latest entry in the continuing series Great Lives Trivialized...
...Even in the first movement of this concerto, which is marked Mastoso and is built on broad heroic lines, the rhythms must be alert and incisive rather than doggedly determined. There are certain turns of phrase which should be rendered with great finesse, and that, in terms of the Chopin style, that means with a very subtle application of rubato. Many pianists, knowing that Chopin calls for rubato tend to throw it on as if with a trowel, distorting the basic metrical life of the music and making the melodies sound maudlin and oversentimental. I find...