Word: keyboard
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...isolated mansion with no liberty privileges, the dozen finalists dug in for one last hellish week of practice, practice, practice. All but the Russians chafed under the regimen. While Anton Kuerti, 28, most promising U.S. contender, kept the other tenants awake into the small hours slaving at the keyboard a minimum of twelve hours a day, the well-prepared Russian trio held their practice sessions to four hours at the most, then blithely played soccer and lounged on the sloping lawns. It was downright disconcerting. "To us Americans, that week was like jail," groaned Michael Ponti, 26. "To them...
...Mirror of Tone. The concert-one trio each by Beethoven, Brahms and Schubert-displayed both the sweep of each man's virtuosity as a soloist and the perfect rapport the three share when playing together. Istomin hulked mightily over the keyboard to delve deep into the music with the sensitive phrasing that distinguishes his playing. Stern and Rose were so perfectly matched that Rose's 1662 Amati cello seemed at times the baritone voice of Stern's Guarnerius violin. In passages in which phrases are repeated alternately be tween them, each provides a mirror of the other...
Pianist Charles Wuorinen's solo "Variations," a frantic and exhausting work, did more than demonstrate his incredible virtuosity at the keyboard. Single, timid treble notes undercut the frenetic, tempestuous rumblings of the bass keys as if the composer were sardonically mocking his own contemporary style. Radical shifts in volume and highly irregular rests produced an extraordinarily witty beginning to a piece which seemed to grow in creasingly bitter...
...films are painstaking creations in color, shot frame by frame, with meticulous painting done between shots. Pianissimo is about a player piano. The keys are all white. It starts to play. As each key hits a note it acquires a color as well, until the whole keyboard looks like a Mediterranean awning. D'Avino goes on coloring everything in sight, including the punched-out player roll itself. The colors grow and move quite magically. In Stone Sonata, he moves stones around a stream bed, coloring them as he goes along in varied patterns that suggest the work...
Lowell-Davidson is an imaginative pianist who sprays his fingers across the keyboard, creating little patterns and half-completed ideas: somehow the bits and pieces fit together, Davidson's performance was remarkable. His quartet included Kent Carter, a brilliant bassist, and Michael Mantler, a trumpet player whose imprecise phrasing just cluttered things up. In Laura and Portrait of Anne, both Davidson compositions, piano and bass complemented each other well...