Word: harpsichords
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...Helen told reporters that she was thinking of retiring. But after reading Time Remembered, she changed her mind. She threw herself into rehearsals with her old-time energy, got a special insight on how to play the Duchess while listening to a recital on a virginal (a 17th century harpsichord). "Suddenly it hit me," she says. "I'd been playing the old Duchess like pounding a bass drum. But she was like that music-dainty, airy, tinkling...
Francis Hopkinson (1737-91) was a Philadelphia lawyer ("One of your pretty, little, curious, ingenious men," wrote John Adams), inventor of an improved method of quilling the harpsichord, signer of the Declaration of Independence, and the first native American composer. He wrote several English-flavored songs, a quantity of church music and an "oratorial entertainment" entitled The Temple of Minerva, which his scattered fans claim as the first American opera. His most ambitious work was Seven Songs, dedicated to his old friend George Washington, who confessed that "I can neither sing one of the songs, nor raise a single note...
...group ended with a captivating performance of Monteverdi's Vago Augelletto. The work requires besides a chorus six vocal soloists, two solo violins and basso continuo (here executed by 'cello, bassoon and harpsichord). This piece of shifting moods makes use of countless different combinations of the solo, choral and instrumental forces...
Ever since she went to London four years ago, critics have fallen over themselves in praise. Said the London Times: "It is not possible to exaggerate the artistic value of her performance. When Miss Rosalyn Tureck plays Bach, all talk about the necessity of having a harpsichord to recapture Bach's style seems little short of nonsense." The Tablet: "Without doubt, the greatest Bach pianist of today." After last week's performance, Amsterdam's Algemeen Handelsblad said: "One could exhaust oneself in expressions of praise . . . Her interpretation sets a new norm, a standard for the style...
...fast, promptly "threw out all I'd done" and started learning over again with an entirely new pianistic technique. She would spend two days mastering four lines. Her playing is unhurried, coolly articulated and generously ornamented, has a miraculous clarity that manages to achieve some of the harpsichord's shimmering brilliance along with the piano's plump sound. Tureck believes that it is unfair to perform Bach on the harpsichord in the concert hall. "Its place is not in the concert hall," she says. "What you hear is a click, if you hear anything...