Word: liszt
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...Bernstein, 43, won bravos from 800 guests by re-creating a work he had played when he was 13 at his piano debut at Boston's Temple Mishkan Tefila. "At the time," recalled the protean composer conductor, "I played variations of the song in the manner of Chopin, Liszt and Gershwin. Now I will play it in the manner of Bernstein." Then, as a proud Samuel Bernstein ("You don't expect your child to be a Moses, a Maimonides, a Leonard Bernstein") listened misty-eyed, Lenny launched into his own expanded version of a fragment of Jewish liturgical...
...hand and listen to Tchaikovsky"; with a gusto born of love, he has been clutching the hand of the public ever since. And although he has long since banished Tchaikovsky from his valise, he regularly summons to the great romantic literature of the piano-Brahms, Schumann, Chopin, Debussy, Liszt-more poetry and grandeur than any other pianist alive. The moderns, Rubinstein thinks, are best left to "the brilliant youngsters to whom these sounds are more natural" (although one of the brilliant youngsters, Van Cliburn, has emerged as Rubinstein's logical successor as a master of the musical romantics...
...atop a pink cloud while an offstage voice sings Sitting on Top of Cloud Nine. Later in the same program, 15 girls will sit on the capitals of 15 Greek columns, wearing white robes and holding golden trumpets-all of which will be preceded by a medley overture from Liszt. During Yom Kippur, it will be replaced by the Kol Nidre...
Roamin' in the Gloamin', one of his most popular tunes, and a 1911 track by that "loud, cheerful noise," Sophie Tucker, in which she belts out Some of These Days in a voice already impressively seamed and corrugated. The piano selections by Rachmaninoff (Liszt's Second Hungarian Rhapsody, recorded in 1919) and Moriz Rosenthal (various Chopin Preludes, recorded in 1929) are less successful, chiefly because the early acoustical method of recording tended to blur the percussive piano sound. But Rachmaninoff's glittering technique is there, and so is a remarkable and ornate cadenza that is preserved...
Janis' playing, as a result, tends to be taut and full of nervous energy. In the coolly classic moods of a composer like Mozart, his performances can be erratic, but few pianists have Janis' flair for the big bravura pieces of Tchaikovsky or Liszt. Last week's concert, studded with thunderous chords and octaves, Zipperlike runs and occasionally a singing, tenoresque line, proved to be a wrist-breaking tour de force. When he came out to take a bow, looking as frail as Liszt himself, Pianist Janis seemed the least exhausted man in the house...