Word: harpe
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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Unlike the hero of Truman Capote's The Grass Harp, Egan Fletcher Jr. does not live in a tree house. Home is what passes for a mansion in Kornelius-Above-the-Shoals, the Southern town where his grandfather owns the cotton mill. Egan lives there on the eve of World War II with his mother and sister, a 14-year-old in itchy jodhpurs...
Britten's characteristic eclecticism dominates the score. As always, he fits great economy of means to his amazing instrumental versatility: a platonic ode to Phaedrus is decorated with a harp; the oncoming plague is heralded by a growling dark tuba. The overture to Venice is glitteringly warm, like the Adriatic itself...
...outset, John Morris's harp chords and sustained flute convey an ominous mood appropriate for the 16th-century Vienna where "quite athwart goes all decorum." Michael Kahn has added a brief prologue that introduces us to some of the unsavory people in the city--including a blind beggar, a pickpocket, a legless cripple. There is no point in trying to avoid the play's prevailingly rancid taste. Kahn has abridged the text a little, so that the show has a running-time of two and a half hours...
...Richardson, an estimable actor back here for the fourth consecutive season, takes a valiant fling at the part. His "sword of heaven" soliloquy is neatly spoken, discreetly underlined by one horn, then a second horn, harp, and flute. But Richardson is most effective in finding humorous aspects in the role, such as when, on donning a monk's disguise, he mimies Friar Peter's rolling of the hands. (Shakespeare had already used the ruler-in-disguise device in Henry V, when the king wanders incognito among his troops just before the Battle of Agincourt...
...Williams's "Baby Please Don't Go." The tune is very well mixed, so if you listen through headphones you can hear Muldaur's glassy slide guitar on the left channel and Amos Garrett's lead guitar on the right, both in conversation with Paul's biting harp way up in the mix. Muldaur and Butterfield grind out the vocals una voce and, in the company of Maria Muldaur's (Geoff's wife) restrained fiddle, the band displays one of the best personal interpretations of Delta blues that has come out in a long time...