Word: musically
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Dates: during 1930-1939
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...Century) by the louder and more flexible modern piano, composers like Bach and Handel wrote sheaves of compositions for it. Even Beethoven turned out a batch of sonatas for the harpsichord. Today, harpsichord playing occupies the position that falconry does in the field of sports. And most early harpsichord music is now played on modern instruments like the piano. But today's handful of harpsichordists point out the undeniable fact that only they can make this 18th-Century music sound the way it did in the 18th Century...
When they are not giving concerts, Chicago's Manuel & Williamson tinkle their harpsichords in privacy in a handsome old greystone house on the South Side. Its 14 large, high-ceilinged rooms are filled with obsolete instruments, antique pictures, books about music of the long ago. Inseparable bachelors, they act, talk, think alike, have identical handwriting, birthdays within 24 hours of each other (June 29 and 30). Though they have toured the whole U. S., they have never appeared in Manhattan because Manhattan concert managers insist that they hire their own hall...
...Manuel & Williamson all music written since the 18th Century has come a long way down hill. Occasionally, for relaxation, they visit the concerts of Frederick Stock's Chicago Symphony, consider the ponderous 19th-Century classics they hear there as comparative fluff. Last month when they heard Harpsichordist Yella Pessl play a lick of swing on a harpsichord broadcast, they turned away their dial in horror. Asked why they prefer 18th Century to all other music, they reply: "It makes us feel spiritually spick & span...
...Chamber orchestras, like Frederique Petrides' Orchestrette Classique, consist of few players, play no big symphonies. Ensembles like Phil Spitalny's all-girl orchestra play only light music...
Good as it is, the music is not Rodgers at quite his best or most individual. But where Rodgers has dropped the reins, Producer Abbott has seized them and gone to town like Yankee Doodle. He has given Too Many Girls the genuine youthfulness of such Abbott comedies as Brother Rat and What a Life, and for the same reason: because it is full of natural, exuberant young people. He has given it a headlong pace, a slam-bang zest and zip. Too Many Girls is in no one respect outstanding, but it doesn't need...