Word: espressivo
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...Sonata's Adagio espressivo certainly captured a more intimate feeling, but the playing was emotionally unremarkable. The high point of the Beethoven came in the Scherzo. where Buswell's devil-may-care boldness struck a wonderful contrast to Levinson's filigreed lines. Here, the interplay of the instruments finally reached the same heights it had achieved in the Bartok...
...entire Quartet showed a sort of 'updated Romantic' sense of time: not too obvious, but always just enough to suggest captivating emotions. Kim and Hwang's deep sounds--the violist's from a gigantic instrument--provided most of the warmth of the opening Andante espressivo-Allegro molto moderato...
Bartok's First Violin Sonata, while heavily influenced by the atonality of Schoenberg, abounds with injunctions of "espressivo" and "appasionato". A listener not aware of this might have thought from Chase's performance that Bartok, desiring some special effect, had ordered the violinist to play dispassionately, and vibrato only selectively if at all. While the first movement is supposed to be tense in character, the rigidity manifest in Chase did not seem quite appropriate. Her sound was frequently forced, and what at first seemed like a special effect--the fact that her vibrato began only after half of each note...
...considered poor when the emotional response of the audience lies more than half a spectrum away. Timing is perfect in the second movement of Tanayev when the cello and violin echo one another, switching, however, for major (happy) to minor (sad). Then the Andante ("at a walking pace") espressivo begins, with major melodies blending into sterner, minor tunes at modulated keys. Taneyev might have been imagining anything about nature, the joy of life, or the prospect of low inflation in 1908. Whatever the case, the muscle of this Andante pulls the three other movements together centripetally...
...Espressivo...