Word: kondrashin
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...some of his melodic writing in the first movement is downright dull. But the elegiac sweep of the middle adagio movement and the jauntiness of the finale compensate admirably for these shortcomings. The concerto is not quite a masterpiece, but Oistrakh and the Moscow Philharmonic under Conductor Kiril Kondrashin perform it as though it were...
...were buying from each other, and at one concert, 600 crashers forced their way in. The next night the Russians played; there were enough empty spaces in the hall to drive a tractor around in, and the crowd dwindled further at intermission. It wasn't that Conductor Kiril Kondrashin had given a poor concert; it was just that the exuberance of Mehta, his orchestra, and Negro Pianist Andre Watts's performance of a Liszt concerto were a hard act to follow...
Cheers, floral tributes and demands for encores greeted the Angelenos' two concerts, not the least because Mehta had complimented the audiences by conducting one of Enesco's Rumanian Rhapsodies from memory, while Kondrashin had used a printed score. At the top, anyway, the fray was friendly. The two conductors met, joked, and talked about politics. Said the vanquished Kondrashin to the victorious Mehta after the Californians' debut: "Maestro, it was beautiful...
SHOSTAKOVICH: SYMPHONY NO. 5 (Melodiya-Angel). The Fifth is Shostakovich's best-known work, part of the repertory of most major orchestras. In the U.S. it has been associated with Leonard Bernstein, who helped to popularize it and who has made a stunningly dramatic recording. Kiril Kondrashin and the Moscow Philharmonic are more lyrical and reflective, so that the first and third movements have special eloquence-emotional search and intellectual despair...
Founded in 1951, the Moscow Philharmonic is Russia's youngest major orchestra. Under the tutelage of Kondrashin, now 51, the Philharmonic specializes in the early classics, contemporary Soviet composers and what the Russians call modern music: Hindemith, Poulenc, Mahler. As for Schoenberg and his successors, Kondrashin says flatly: "Nyet! This is not music. This is noise." He drills his young (average age: 35) musicians four to six hours a day. He admires U.S. orchestras for their happy blend of "German discipline and a French kind of freedom." But as a loyal Communist, he has decried their artistic and financial...