Word: lyrical
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SCHUMANN: FOUR SYMPHONIES (Columbia). In recording Schumann's symphonies as they were originally orchestrated, Leonard Bernstein has compiled a catalogue of the composer's many moods. He deals decisively with the complicated polyphonic structure that Schumann imposed upon his gentle, lyric thoughts and puts the composer-whimsical, sad, angry-across without blurring overlaps of Teutonic bravura...
...Stella the organization for his Coney Island, with its warring scene of roller coasters and jumbled humanity. German expressionism gave the discipline to Marsden Hartley's strong Maine landscapes fishermen and lumberjacks. Georgia O'Keeffe, now 77 and living in New Mexico, depicts with barebone simplicity her lyric view of "my country−terrible winds and wonderful emptiness." Even more sharp-focused was Charles Demuth's I saw the Figure 5 in Gold, with its exulation of typography and kaleidoscopic street imagery, is now revered as an icon...
Goethe was a notable philosopher, a crack professional scientist, a successful political administrator, a stylist second to none in German literature, a major novelist and dramatist, and probably the most richly expressive lyric poet who ever lived-a genius who differed in kind but not in degree from Dante and Shakespeare. He wrote a hundred times more than either of them-his collected works fill 150 volumes-and consequently more of what he wrote is dated; The Sorrows of Young Werther, for instance, reads in this unsentimental century like soap opera written in gold ink. But his finest works-Iphigenia...
...Carnegie Hall; this is a recording of that long-awaited performance. The program, which ranges from a Bach- Busoni toccata (Horowitz's good luck piece because it was the first selection on his debut program) through Chopin to Scriabin, shows a variety of technique and mood from lyric tranquillity to bravura virtuosity. The pianist is master of them all. Perhaps most beautiful is the inspired Schumann Fantasy in C Major; the final notes of the second movement float out as if played on an English horn and last unbelievably long...
Comic-Strip Shaw. For 23 years on the Tribune, Cassidy not only criticized the cultural world of Chicago; to a large extent, she ran it. She helped persuade Conductor Fritz Reiner to take over the Chicago Symphony (1953-62), and she helped build up the estimable Chicago Lyric Opera. When she liked something -or someone-she lavished compliments. She was one of the first to praise and promote Tennessee Williams. Reviewing the 1944 world premiere of The Glass Menagerie, she wrote: "It is honest, tender, tough and brilliant...