Word: idioms
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...Rzewski's Marxism was so fundamental to him that he hardly wrote a piece without a populist affirmation of some kind. And having early in his career sensed an incompatibility between his political views and any austerity of style, Rzewski gradually adopted a quasi-19th-century romantic idiom with the intention "to establish communication [with], rather than to alienate an audience." His most famous work is a brilliant hour-long set of diverse variations for piano on a Chilean leftist anthem, "The People United Will Never Be Defeated" (1975). In the late '70s and early '80s Rzewski turned to American...
...Jean-Louis Scherrer, had a couple of extravaganzas worthy of an Edith Wharton parvenu. Compared with these flights into fairyland, the Balmain show is almost severe. De la Renta's gowns show the most exquisite materials and embroidery but are presented, as it were, in translation -- to a modern idiom. The last-minute bolts of georgette appear in a series of elegant sheaths, delicately layered, that have the cool beauty of a waterfall. One knockout skirt is of raffia -- the straw-hat material -- that looks amazingly like embroidery...
...boundaries of dance. Tharp was one of many choreographers who were trying to harness their talents to the Russian's genius, and mostly these efforts flopped. But her Push Comes to Shove (1976) showed a different, up-to-the- minute Baryshnikov -- impish, racy and reckless -- and a new idiom for classical ballet...
...ultimate success of any new opera, though, depends on the composer. Glass's stubborn refusal to "develop" his uncompromising idiom has exasperated some, who point to the more flexible, eclectic style of John Adams (Nixon in China) as a way out of the minimalist box. Glass's chug-chug style remains instantly recognizable, but his music has colored and deepened over the years. The Voyage lowers, thunders and rages -- it begins with the same six-note figure that opens Wagner's Die Walkure -- vividly reflecting Hawking's visions of terror and wonder and Columbus' dark and stormy night...
Passionate and energetic by nature, Johnson felt most drawn to an Expressionist idiom. His particular heroes were Chaim Soutine (especially the convulsive Ceret landscapes) and, later, Oskar Kokoschka. At the outset, his homages to Soutine's surging hills and toppling houses had a somewhat illustrational tone -- painting from the motif, he sometimes used a distorting lens to produce the effect, as earlier landscapists had used a smoked Claude Lorraine glass -- so that the image turned out more optical than visceral. But as his sense of the relations between mark and motif increased, Johnson's landscapes accumulated power, and some...