Word: flair
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1990-1999
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...Rourke's look at "the lighter side" of overpopulation, famine, ecological disaster and other global environmental woes, the reader begins to wonder whether somewhere between writing Republican Party Reptile and this latest effort the author suffered a stroke. Left intact are O'Rourke's accustomed descriptive flair and facility for throwaway lines -- " 'dying like flies' is not a simile you'd use in Somalia. The flies wax prosperous and lead full lives." Gone, however, is any faculty for building an argument...
...Second Bull Run and Chancellorsville, and survived. Some of the best passages in Family occur when Frazier follows, in a rented car, the marches undertaken by the 55th and tries to take himself back in time. Usually he succeeds, and when he fails he still shows his familiar flair for comic relief: "I figured that my suitcase, briefcase and golf clubs probably weighed about the same as the full kit and rifle carried by a private in the 55th. I considered parking the car and trying some of this march myself, fully loaded, just to get an idea what...
Writing with great flair, Preston introduces his readers to the terrors of the filovirus, a family of threadlike viruses found in the rain-forest regions of Central Africa. He describes a 1976 outbreak that spread through villages near the Ebola River in Zaire, killing as many as 90% of those infected. This so-called Ebola Zaire virus is the deadliest of the filoviruses, but its Ebola Sudan and Marburg kin, while not as deadly, cause equally horrible symptoms...
Chailly and the Concertgebouw bring the strictness to life, but not without a little flair. It's quite a change from the calm, reserved playing the orchestra usually produces in performances of the standard Teutonic masterworks. However, one can almost see a bunch of musicians in Moscow, completely ignorant of stylists such as Jelly Roll Morton and Duke Ellington, taking some joy in the fluffy flourishes of Shostakovich's work. These musicians had perhaps heard of Scott Joplin, and in fact Joplin seems the closest to Shostakovich in form...
...surprisingly, it is in the ancillary "filler" pieces where Haitink really shines with surprising passion - the Tragic and Academic Festive Overtures, the two serenades, the Variations on a Theme by Haydn, and the only three Hungarian dances that Brahms rescored for orchestra. The two overtures have plenty of flair to spare, and the Hungarian dances, number one in particular, simply scintillate. Haitink gives sensitive accounts of both serenades, and the jaunty conclusion of the Serenade in D deserves special mention...