Word: chord
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...legs and lots of pictures on it. 'My mother. Queen Mary, arranged that,' the Duke said. I saw I couldn't do much with the piano, so I decided to play a Chopin Polonaise, invariably an effective piece for an unmusical person. When I struck the first big fortissimo chord, the entire piano collapsed at my feet. That was the end of the concert...
...first half of the program, this piece contrasted with the incredibly powerful Kodaly Te Deum. Kodaly achieves the same effect that is so exciting in much of Shostakovitch's music: a pounding rhythm carried over from a previous phrase into a huge, loud, added-note chord that floods the concert hall with a sound that feels like it's going to go through your whole body. Kodaly uses silence very effectively after these moments, much as a polished public speaker will pause after particularly emotional apostrophe...
Davidson now seems to be working toward a synthesis. There was a tonality in most of the numbers. But its emphasis was slight enough so that melodic improvisations were not heard solely in relation to the key--or chord movement--as they are in conventional jazz. The instruments played together, unlike last year when they would start and end together but go off in their own rhythmical directions in the middle. Still, there was no "beat," and I don't think I noticed any foot tapping in the audience. Although Davidson's compositions could hardly be called tuneful, there were...
...clarinets--phrased things well in the many interchanges. It is too bad, then, that several instruments failed at critical moments: the tranquille violin solo going sour, wrong notes spoiling a cello phrase, the horns (after hitting everything else) slurping the octave in their famous solo, an oboe flatting a chord, and most obtrusively, a trumpet missing its jarring D-flat (as if the Don were stabbed with a broken sword.) But these little disasters were exceptions, due probably to nerves...
Less excusable was the orchestra's refusal to play a true pianissimo, depriving Strauss's tragic chord of most of its mystery. And often inflections betrayed caution and over-literalness, such as in the excessively elongated eighths of the horn-calls. Fortunately Don Juan is a rondo, which means that what goes wrong the first time can be corrected the next: The intonation of the violins and the precision of the brasses both improved rapidly...