Word: musics
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1990-1999
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Last Thursday one of the most talented musicians of the Class of 1999 gave a farewell organ recital in Adolphus Busch Hall. Daniel Forger III of Eliot House has been a visible/audible musical presence on campus and off-he is in charge of music for a whole congregation of parishioners in Porter Square. Forger has often played in the Memorial Church and was instrumental in bringing the popular National Public Radio organ program "Pipedreams" to WHRB...
...Thursday's program showed, Forger is a virtuoso organist. A demanding Brahms G minor Prelude and Fugue (with hints of Bach S. 542?) preceded dense music of the late master Jean Langlais and of Helmut Walcha, a superb organist in his own right, whose neo-Baroque compositions spring from a performative mastery of the original idiom...
...finale, Forger offered Concert Variations on the Austrian Hymn, by John Knowles Paine. Paine, whose music hall delights in its eponymity, was Professor of Music at Harvard and the author of some flamboyant organ music, including a double fugue on "America." In the piece heard Thursday, Forger delivered Paine's diverse amplifications of the original Haydn melody with sensitivity and grace and the last wriation for which Forger pulled out all the stops, was grand and moving. At least one well-known campus music figure was spotted in tears; next year Harvard will be much the worse without Forger...
Next was a piece by Askell Masson, a friend of Glennie's and the author of disagreeably bombastic music, although the concluding moments-feted to include five simultaneous polyrhythms, too many for the Crimson's ears-were nevertheless impressive. David Heath's "Darkness to Light," apparently a programmatic look at a bipolar emotional experience, offered a visually engaging tour of Glennie's complex stage setup, and concluded with a delicate, well-balanced duet between vibraphone and piano. Smith was a remarkably sensitive musician from start to finish...
Often Glennie would address the audience in her heavy Scottish brogue, and she described the next music, arranged by Ian Finkel, as a "lollipop piece." "The Gypsy Virtuoso" was full of smiling allusions to the Liszt Hungarian Rhapsodies and the Brahms Hungarian Dances, all poured into the formal mold or a concerto movement. Glennie's arrangement of a Kevin Volans piece, "She who sleeps with a small blanket," is, in her own word, "disconcerting," scored for bongos, congas, bass drum, and marimba. Whoever "She" is, she has nightmares. The concert continued with a virtuoso marimba solo, "Velocities" by Joseph Schwantner...