Word: chopines
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Whether or not Boyk intentionally programmed Chopin's "Raindrop" prelude to follow the "Tempest" sonata, the music unfortunately dropped from a storm to a drizzle. The Chopin prelude in D minor ended the program on a dazzling, but musically insubstantial, note. Chopin, though entertaining, cheapened the program...
...hold her hand and listen to Tchaikovsky"; with a gusto born of love, he has been clutching the hand of the public ever since. And although he has long since banished Tchaikovsky from his valise, he regularly summons to the great romantic literature of the piano-Brahms, Schumann, Chopin, Debussy, Liszt-more poetry and grandeur than any other pianist alive. The moderns, Rubinstein thinks, are best left to "the brilliant youngsters to whom these sounds are more natural" (although one of the brilliant youngsters, Van Cliburn, has emerged as Rubinstein's logical successor as a master of the musical...
Rubinstein prides himself on being "a very normal person" ("I don't think anyone can beat me on that"), and when he sits down at the piano to ruminate on Chopin, say, or Schumann, he does so with the majestic air of a man who can look beneath the surface to the ultimate simplicities of great art. No other pianist achieves quite the same authority, nor does any other contemporary command Rubinstein's remarkable elegance of tone. Big or small, the sound is always rich and full-in contrast to that of the younger pianists who tend...
...music. Puccini was the best of the wops. His aim was to entertain well-fed folk after dinner-and he did it very competently. Verdi is not to be heard sober, but with a few whiskies tinder my belt I enjoy the last act of II Trovatore. Chopin is a sugar-teat: his music is excellent on rainy afternoons in Winter, with the fire burning, the shaker full and the girl somewhat silly...
...less kind. On Haydn: "The feelings that he put into tone were [those of] a country pastor, a rather civilized stockbroker. When he wept it was the tears of a woman who has discovered another wrinkle." Tchaikovsky's music was "as hollow as a bull by an archbishop." Chopin reminded him of "two embalmers at work upon a minor poet," and Richard Strauss of "Old Home Week in Gomorrah...