Word: conductor
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...threatening that link and there's little I can do to stop it. It is as though an old, rusty train has ground into motion and is pulling out of the shed where it has been stored since 1974. Newt Gingrich and Henry Hyde are there, one the conductor, the other the engineer. Barney Frank and Robert Wexler are inside one of the cars, waving at us through the cloudy windows. And we, the people, are standing in the weeds by the track, watching as the train chugs along across the land, toward an unknown destiny. We didn't decide...
...Previn's well-bred score barely hints at the dark crosscurrents of obsession and desperation that made Tennessee Williams' play so naggingly memorable. This slow-moving Streetcar is tonal but tuneless, sometimes violent but never sexy. Even the bluesy bits are oddly polite--an unexpected letdown from a composer-conductor who plays first-rate jazz piano on the side. Let's face it, Williams' lush prose needs no music: it is its own opera...
Last Sunday's spectacular Boston Symphony Orchestra (BSO) concert on the Boston Common surprised no one. This free performance of Beethoven's Ninth Symphony on the genteel Boston Common was a fitting tribute to BSO conductor Seiji Ozawa, whose 25th year with the orchestra it celebrated...
...fanfare began with a thoughtful and fitting video tribute to Seiji Ozawa's life and legacy Boston mayor Thomas Menino good-naturedly fumbled his tribute to the maestro, mispronouncing his name and misnaming the chorus. Finally, before the Symphony began, Boston Pops Conductor Keith Lockhart and Pops laureate conductor John Williams led the BSO in the "Star Spangled Banner" and "America the Beautiful." Their presence was not previously announced, but would have been sorely missed...
...only surprise of the afternoon was the absence of the honoree, Maestro Ozawa himself. He had been seriously ill all week--so sick that he could not conduct even conduct opening night at the Symphony on Wednesday. He would appear to conduct the fourth movement only. Brand-new assistant conductor Federico Cortese received the brunt of this surprise. Sunday's command performance was his first with the BSO, and with Beethoven's Ninth and an audience of 100,000 on the Boston Common is more than any conductor should expect in a lifetime, not to mention the first...