Word: instrument
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1970-1979
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...talking or gesticulating or demonstrating, Rostropovich won the rapt attention of his audience. Wildly waving his arms to illustrate musical points and likening performers' bad habits to sausages, pollution and clumsy love, Rostropovich repeatedly exhibited what a superlative musician can offer a student and an audience, even without his instrument...
...said she felt like she was watching a tape of the Johnny Carson Show. Rostropovich never severed his communication with the audience. Colorful metaphors abounded. At one point in the Haydn D major Concerto, a theme appears twice in the score: once in the low, masculine register of the instrument and then in the bright, upper register. "Why, all of a sudden, does the theme appear in the upper register?" he asked after Gregory Colburn '79 had played the passage. And without waiting for a reply, he added, "Because there was not enough air in the low register...
...music he was about to play before setting his bow on the strings. "When you truly understand the music, the desire to play the music will awaken itself in you. Your imagination must always be your teacher. It must teach you before you've sat down at the instrument...
When he plays the cello Rostropovich adopts the same manner he uses to captivate a master class audience--animated gesture and colorful language. But with the instrument before him he is more at home, more self-assured, more convincing. "You must be like a conductor when you play," Rostropovich insisted as Ma played in the master class. "You must not be only you." From watching the Russian rehearse with the Dvorak concerto with Boston Symphony a week ago, it was clear that he has taken his own advice to heart...
...part, he often conducts with his bow; when he is playing, he conducts with his head and his body gestures. Rostropovich and Seiji Ozawa seem almost to dance together, even when they lose eye contact. If Rostropovich has a comment to make to the orchestra--and he knows every instrument's part--he demonstrates what it should sound like on his cello. Rostropovich is a thorough musician, and when he plays or rehearses with an orchestra, he takes charge...