Word: grandeur
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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Hovahness's Concerto No.8 for Orchestra and his "Prayer of St. Gregory" were accentuated in their grandeur by the presence of their creator. Batonless, the octagenarian composer himself conducted the former work. The orchestra, which seems at its best with the Baroque, carried the piece's modernist Eastern European theme well. Hovahness's Slavic exoticism recalls Mussorgsky and Stravinsky...
...does not lessen the grandeur of the human intellect to argue that it evolved partly in response to social pressures or that these pressures also produced similar abilities in "lesser" creatures. Instead, the fact that nature may have broadly sown the seeds of consciousness suggests a world enlivened by many different minds. There may even be practical applications. Studies of animal cognition and language have yielded new approaches to communicating with handicapped and autistic children. Some scientists are pondering ways to turn intelligent animals like sea lions and dolphins into research assistants in marine studies or into lifeguards...
...What Andrew and I loved about the book," Mackintosh says, "was that it took itself terribly seriously." And so, for a few hours, do we take the Phantom. We live fully in his grandeur and pain. And when we leave, he keeps singing. The Phantom of the Opera is there, inside our minds...
...Monnaie in 1991. Thanks to Belgian government backing, Morris was able to mount a handsome production, with especially lavish costumes. The largesse makes it even more unfortunate that in the end the choreographer's imagination is defeated by Tchaikovsky. In the second act the music expands opulently, demanding matching grandeur onstage. But Morris wastes the grand pas de deux on a routine group number and sets the explosive coda as a small- scale duet for Marie, the heroine, and the Nutcracker Prince. It's a bad letdown...
...what's inside that counts; the enthralling vistas matter less than the interior vision. That lesson is lost on Hollywood, whose idea of epic biography is a story of a big shot (Gandhi, Bugsy Siegel, Malcolm X) who got shot. Violent death is meant to lend tragic grandeur...