Word: obbligatos
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...their accustomed stage personae to hint at tenuous meanings as complex as any in Eliot's poetry. Gielgud, a seedy intellectual in beer-stained pinstripes, conceals his natural grace and authority under nervous movements-hitching up his pants, ruffling his sandy-haired wig, filching cigarettes. He babbles an obbligato of literary cliches in an excessively ingratiating attempt to establish human contact. Richardson's stock character, the failed dreamer, prefers to stay pick led in his past: his arm now is to "drink with dignity." This monument to frozen illusions suddenly shatters in not one, but two thudding, alcoholic...
...third excellent wind soloist, Stephen Hammer, played the oboe for Bach Cantata No. 56. His contribution was the most exciting aspect of the piece. His phrasing of the obbligato line in the second aria demonstrated a facility with the instrument coupled with great sensitivity to precise imitation. The basso for the cantata, David Evitts, had been recruited in extremely short order. He sounded tired, with several lapses of diction and little variation of timbre or volume. In general, he was a shadow of the big, confident singer he had been just one night before as soloist with the Collegium...
...fans beknighted him the "Meistersinger Minister." Who knows? If Scheel could get together with West Europe's other leaders, even the factions in the Common Market might stay in tune. Scheel could sing, Edward Heath could pound the piano, and Georges Pompidou might even learn to tootle an obbligato on the French horn...
Smiling easily, she never lost her professional detachment, despite the obbligato of snarling drills and hammering as workmen put the finishing touches on the theater. Local newspapermen, wistfully recalling her public pyrotechnics of 20 years ago and hoping for more of the same, groaned in frustration at her low-keyed manner during rehearsals. One reporter disguised himself as a soldier in the chorus in order to get a story...
...alto with flute obbligato was sung beautifully and smoothly though with little contrast within each voice. John Ferris, the choirmaster, seems to prefer building with blocks of sound, drawing contrast from combinations of timbre rather than individual efforts within a given part. This is on excellent policy when dealing with an acoustical entity as dry as Memorial Church. In a building that holds over 1000 people and offers no echo, terraced dynamics and antiphonal contrast are the surer path to expressive variety...