Word: musicians
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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Chiropodists & Cellos. The idea was Professor Weber's. "Unless our small towns are good," he thought, "we cannot say that we have a cultured country." He wanted a town orchestra as an "outlet for the musician who doesn't want to be a virtuoso but who still wants to play"-and who otherwise doesn't have a chance "unless he is a little Heifetz." Nelson Vance Russell, president of Carroll College, was as eager as Weber, and Cymbalist Hayek finally agreed to try. Result: the Waukesha Symphony...
Weber and Hayek rounded up a nucleus of professionals. For the rest, says Weber, "we took in everyone who could creep and crawl." The non-pros include mailmen, policemen, engineers, salesmen and a chiropodist. One musician, an accountant, rides his motorcycle 30 miles from his Watertown job, wearing an old Air Force flying suit over his tuxedo, to play. Until she retired to have her fourth baby, his wife used to ride with him, clutching her cello. Now, at their five concerts a year in the Soo-seat Waukesha High School auditorium, Waukeshans hear creditable and sometimes even polished performances...
...front of her. "Behind me! Behind me!'' she cried. "Never get in front of anybody on the stage!" Nobody really cared that the luster was gone from her voice. "Naturally, she's not going to sing the way she did a generation back," a musician said. "Nobody expects her to. But also don't forget that she's a genuine, 24-carat prima donna of the old school...
...liked, and could tell why. He admired Clara Schumann because her playing "is a most truthful representation of magnificent compositions, but not an outpouring of a magnificent personality . . . Everything is distinct, clear, sharp as a pencil sketch." But if Hanslick had never written a word about any other musician, his place in musical history would still be secure as the sharpest thorn in the sensitive flesh of Richard Wagner...
Hanslick began to find Wagner "neither a great musician nor a great poet. He can be called at best . . . a decorative genius." His instrumentation, the critic wrote, "with its clever use of tone colors and its elastic application to the text . . . is what makes Wagner's music seem dazzlingly new, exotic and fabulous, and completely acceptable to many listeners as a substitute for real music...