Word: concertos
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...instrument (which Mr. Avshalomov used in Milhaud's "Percussion Concerto") to which the reviewer referred as "a dilapidated Fourth-of-July noisemaker" is actually a respected piece of percussion paraphernalia known as a ratchet. Ratchets have delighted so many for so long that it is scarcely necessary to recall their grand history...
...instant she looked like a puckish milkmaid, the next like Ophelia going mad. The music was Schumann's cello concerto, a rapturous, heart-on-the-sleeve piece that was clearly intended to sear, not soothe, the savage breast. The cellist was Britain's Jacqueline Du Pré, who performed last week in Manhattan with Leonard Bernstein's New York Philharmonic. It was a performance to be seen as much as heard, for Du Pré couldn't sit still a minute...
David Avshalamov, the soloist in Milhaud's Percussion Concerto made the opening piece fun to watch, pulling one instrument after another--including a dilapidated Fourth-of-July noisemaker--from a cache under his row of drums. His engaging performance made it hard to concentrate on the music, and it was just as well, for musically the piece is quite dull...
...Beethoven's Piano Concerto No. 4. Unfortunately, Orin Grossman's performance, light and brilliant though it was, lacked the warmth the work must have to be effective. The first movement suffered most: the opening solo was not instantly captivating; the orchestra plodded along sounding labored, even leaden. The second movement contained some beautiful moments. In the finale the orchestra caught fire, and Grossman's brilliance served him well. The movement was marred only by the orchestra's repeated failure to play the main theme truly pianissimo...
BEETHOVEN: EMPEROR CONCERTO (Odyssey). Walter Gieseking made the recording in London shortly before his death in 1956, and it is a fitting final statement by a major interpreter of Beethoven. Herbert von Karajan conducts the Philharmonia Orchestra in a fiery, romantic interpretation of the masterpiece...