Word: conductor
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Davies' best defense to date is that very opera Taverner. The Royal Opera, now under the adventurous direction of Conductor Colin Davis, has given Taverner a handsome, stirring production that turns out to be one of the major events of London's operatic season...
...traditional opera as a mélange of spinning theatrical events that dazzle the eye and rivet the ear. Musically, when Davies is not weaving in themes from Taverner, his treatment of the usual choirs of the orchestra has enough richness and fireworks (ignited in masterly fashion by Conductor Edward Downes) to placate the most avid devotees of Richard Strauss. Davies' hair-raising special effects-massed percussion, squealing clarinets, even the grating of a knife grinder-should be enough to titillate John Cage...
...tough opera," said Davies after the première-at which, however, there were twelve curtain calls and no cries of "Rubbish!" "I was pleased that the people listened to it patiently. It will benefit from repeated hearings." Conductor Downes agreed that the score was "murderously difficult" and saw no need to delay a verdict. "This is musical theater at its best, a great step forward to the opera of the future," he said. "I cannot recall a similarly favorable reception to a new opera in Britain...
...Golden Spinning Wheel, Symphonic Variations (London Symphony Orchestra, Istvan Kertesz conductor; London, $5.98). Mention the words "tone poem" and the average post-Romantic music buff will think of Franz (Mazeppa) Liszt or Richard (Don Juan) Strauss, but rarely of Dvorak. A pity, since Dvorak, too, was a master of the genre. His subjects varied from The Watersprite to The Midday Witch, but he was never more magical than in The Golden Spinning Wheel. Recounting the fairy tale of a lovely spinning girl who pays somewhat gruesomely for a king's love, Dvorak filled his 26-minute score with bold...
Stravinsky: Petrushka (New York Philharmonic, Pierre Boulez conductor, Columbia, $5.98). Boulez's first recording with his new charges at the Philharmonic, and a sonic dazzler. When Stravinsky conducted this music, he deliberately gave it a kind of squeeze-box accordion sound, as though trying to match the marionette-stage milieu of the puppet hero. Boulez's performance is much broader in both aura and atmosphere, as if his touchstones were the gay, extroverted Shrovetide Fair scenes that open and close the work. The approaches are opposed but, happily, of equal validity...