Word: concertizer
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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Even during his own lifetime, Bach long stood low on the list of important composers. His contemporaries placed both Telemann and Handle above him. They considered him primarily the virtuoso organist. The last days of church concert music left Bach with an often insurmoutable penury of players and singers. He must often have felt the decline of contemporary musicianship as he played the organ, directed the choir, and conducted the orchestra at the same time. To the end, he affirmed his dedication to the sacred music whose reign was then work on a secular fugue to write extremely religious chorale...
Nonetheless, the Harvard Summer School concert last week provided an example of last century's understanding of Bach. Pina Carmirelli, in a long black, sequined dress, exemplified the Romantic spirit in her performance. During the Bach violin-piano sonata in E minor, she presented one of the last Romantic interpretations of Bach. Schweitzer thinks that the sonata is unplayable today. He says that is can be played on a harpsichord and a violin with loosened bow to bring out the full flavor of the double-stopping. Wagner felt that the timber of the violin and the piano are naturally incompatible...
...Karl Richter, Corelli and Vivaldi by I Musici di Roma, and even a night of Indian music with Sitarist Debabrata Chaudhury and Tabla Virtuoso Sitaram. The highlight of the festival will take place on Sept. 17, when the Orchestre de la Radio Suisse Italienne will present a concert of Mozart and Haydn atop 10,000-ft.-high Diablerets Glacier...
...learned more than 20 complete roles in her first year. By 1929 she was with the Met, winning acclaim for her roles in Norma, Faust, Lakme, Romeo and Juliet and particularly Carmen. Between performances, she popularized opera on radio, starred in movies, and went on innumerable concert tours. "There is a feeling, particularly around New York," she once said, "that audiences around the country want only the potboilers and insist on them. This simply isn't true...
Died. Wilhelm Backhaus, 85, German patriarch of concert pianists and the century's foremost interpreter of Beethoven; of a heart attack; in Villach, Austria. When Backhaus was eight, the noted pianist-composer Arthur Nikisch wrote to him that "whoever plays the great Bach so well when so young will surely make his way later on." The assessment was overly modest. In a career spanning three generations, Backhaus won acclaim for his masterful interpretations of virtually all the great composers. But his deepest dedication was to Beethoven, whose sonatas he played with great clarity of style and breadth of emotion...