Word: grimness
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...shake off some of Losey's heavy seriousness. Missing are the wit and verve, the "elate darting rhythms" with which Shaw said Mozart conveyed the spirit of the work. Here the music is not as much help as it might be, since Lorin Maazel conducts it with such grim, unrelenting drive. (The complete soundtrack has been released in a three-LP set by Columbia...
...grim story has been told before, but never with such sweep and grieving comprehension. Part of the reason is new information, part is the skill and lineage of the author. Thomas Pakenham's mother, the Countess of Longford, is the biographer of Victoria and Wellington. His sister is Antonia Fraser, biographer of Cromwell, Mary Queen of Scots and Charles II. Pakenham was able to prowl the great houses of Britain in search of long-lost letters, papers and diaries, took time to learn Dutch and Afrikaans, and early in his eight years of research recorded the memories...
...album liner notes complete the grim destruction of subtlety. For every cut Hubbard has written a brief description of the precise scene she wants to create with her music. It would have been preferable just to read her notes and take the tedium of the album on faith...
...Siberia, plays Russian roulette, dies and rises again from the dead. The death is heralded by crashing chords from Hubbard's piano, the ascension by a rising run on the bouzouki. As "Russian Roulette" gives way to "Dream #23," Clarke--in his sole appearance on the album--gives a grim picture of war-wracked Stuart England. His bass conveys depression and despair by a simple, minor sequence. Hubbard tries to flesh out the piece by drastically slowing the tempo and playing entirely in the piano's lower register. For all of Hubbard's attempts to write "felt" music, her combination...
...grim song follows. A synthesizer simulates the wailing of Muslim prayer chants, in what sounds like an attempt to parody ancient ritual. Juxtaposed with her notes, Hubbard's piano part on the cut becomes simply a trite rendition of images that have long-ago been worked to death. In her search for a niche for herself, Hubbard, despite her supposed "renaissance," merely recasts old tunes, old images, and old ideas in a new, sucaryled form...