Word: concertos
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Bach's Brandenburg Concerto No. 2 is rarely played in the concert hall-and even more rarely played well. But Bach himself would have been pleased with last week's performance by the Hamburg Chamber Orchestra, and the Hamburg Musikhalle echoed to a stamping, shouting ovation. The orchestra had provided a dividend: playing the fiendishly difficult trumpet part was perhaps the best classical trumpeter in Europe-the North German Radio Orchestra's pint-sized (5 ft. 1 in.), portly (187 Ibs.) Adolf Scherbaum...
...above high C, and wise conductors almost always cheat on the trumpet part and make do with an E-flat clarinet or a soprano saxophone. As distinguished a musician as the Vienna Philharmonic's Helmuth Wobisch has been known to enlist a second trumpeter to negotiate the concerto's lower passages while he concentrated on the high ones...
...shaped instrumentalist blew through the intricacies of the high coloratura with characteristic ease; he blasted a final, full-volume flourish that brought an audible gasp from the audience. Chances are that he could have gone through the whole piece with his eyes shut: he has recorded the concerto for 14 different labels, has become so thoroughly identified with it that in Western and Eastern Europe alike, the solution to the Second Brandenburg has become-"Get Scherbaum." Czech-born Scherbaum, 52, studied at the Prague Academy of Music, graduated to the Brno Opera Orchestra, and while there started "experimenting with playing...
...absent Igor had made a piano roll of the concerto's first movement in 1925, was in Europe at the time of this pianistic hanky-panky and missed hearing Stravinsky playing Stravinsky (see Music...
Peppermint & Rolls. As the unmanned Steinway eerily picked its note-perfect way through the concerto in Los Angeles, thousands of other pianolas* were making rumpus rooms, rathskellers and taverns resound all over the U.S. Most of them-foot-pumped jobs with no concert-grand pretensions-were being played for the sheer rinky-tink fun of it by people who own either vintage instruments rescued from dusty oblivion or brand-new 1962 models, bought in a shiny showroom. The player piano is coming back into its own again to the tune of Moon River and The Peppermint Twist. And, once again...