Word: fortissimos
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...first movement has an unusual, slightly ear-jarring opening, and quickly develops all its themes at once. The orchestra sometimes seemed to overpower the soloist, but the fault may have been with the piano itself, which had a muddy quality that was not conducive to fortissimo passages or soaring clarity of sound. Perahia performed his own cadenza, which displayed a wonderful range of emotions and beautiful nuances...
...orchestra had extended a similar musical promise with its sparkling performance of the overture. The music-making was superb from the outset: members of the chorus blended well with each other and sang fortissimo without overwhelming Christina Harrop's slight Giannetta. Gregory Turay turned Nemorino's first tenor solo into a great vocal cadenza. Soprano Lisa Saffer's Adina soon demonstrated that her coloratura could amply meet the demands of the bel canto style...
...playing the Wag ner overture immediately showed one of the BSO's prime weaknesses--it can't play very loudly. It's possible that the Koussevitsky Music Shed, because of its open-air construction, dissipates the sound. Despite possible infrastructure problems, the orchestra seemed to lack a fierce fortissimo at the top of its dynamic range...
...enough to excuse his departures. The conclusion was a gradual rise from the lowest D-flat (tonic for the Beethoven) to the highest note on the keyboard, which was repeated more and more softly and less and less frequently until after a long rest it was slammed once more, fortissimo, and the piece was over...
...although Basquiat's images look quite vivid and sharp when one first sees them, and though from time to time he could produce an intriguing passage of spiky marks or a brisk clash of blaring color, the work quickly settles into the visual monotony of arid overstylization. Its relentless fortissimo is wearisome. (An exception is some of the works on paper, which attain a delicacy of placement and interval absent from the paintings...