Word: finests
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...Bach Society Orchestra's programming of two of the Opus 6 concerto grossi was a welcome step into the edifice of Handel's creations. The set of twelve concertos comprise the finest English instrumental music written until this century. There can be no doubt that Handel, although born in Saxony and raised on Italian opera, is a thoroughly English composer. He arrived in London during the interregnum left by the death of Purcell in 1695 and the first works of Thomas Arne twenty years later. By 1710 Handel had subsumed into his Italianate idiom the brilliant scoring, deep love...
...revival of King Lear that is by far the best work that the Lincoln Center Repertory Theater has ever offered, Lee J. Cobb gives the finest performance of a lengthy and distinguished acting career. A graduate of the militantly proletarian Group Theater of the late '30s, he was the quintessential Willy Loman in Broadway's first production of Death of a Salesman. Conventionally cast as a Hollywood heavy in many of his countless films (among them: Thieves' Highway, On the Waterfront), he almost invariably brought glimmerings of insight to even the most routine parts...
...Webern, a forbidding set of pieces, was for me the Orchestra's finest effort, thanks to strong performances by the principals, especially the first horn. Apart from the low winds' curious timbre, the only real problems were relatively small ones: a lack of rhythmic incisiveness in number Four, a Westminster chime, and some languid contrasts...
...melodies was precisely thought out and excellently proportioned among the voices. As for the seven soloists, the men were more distinguished than the women in regard to vocal blend if not phrasing, with Daniel Collins, the countertenor, David Evitts, the baritone, and Mark Pearson, the bass-baritone, producing the finest singing. The mezzosoprano and soprano, Jan Curtis and Susan Stevens, sounded totally alien, much as if one were simultaneously listening to a barrel-organ and a celeste. The choir was improperly overbalanced by the women, except in the Gloria, who smiled eloquently but sang somewhat carelessly. The contrabass continuo...
...more than a pretext for whimsical directorial pranks. Peter Brook is not that kind of man. He looks before he makes his exciting leaps. He wants a theater of passion and directs his plays to that end. At his best, he is flamboyantly faithful to his own finest dramatic aphorism: "A play is play...