Word: opus
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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Schumann's Piano Concerto in A minor, Opus 54 opened the evening with bright and pleasant fervor. According to the program notes, this particular concer-to--like a good deal of his other pieces--was composed for Schumann's wife Clara, who performed as the soloist during its premeire on Dec. 4, 1845. Upon hearing the concerto, one cannot help but dream about what a wonderful and passionate performance the premiere must have been. One can hear Schumann's adoration for Clara etched into every movent, from the sparkling and brilliant "Allegro affettuoso" to the slower, sweeter "Intermezzo: Andantino grazioso...
...success has reached the point that it has. The sprightly romance of Schumann's piece came to vivacious, yet intricately beautiful life under Andsnes' care. With the rest of the orchestra perfectly accompanying but never overshadowing him, the Norwegian pianist played the Piano Concerto in A minor, Opus 54 with the enchanting energy that Schumann must have intended the piece to be performed with...
DIED. HENRY HAMPTON, 58, Emmy-winning documentary producer; from a bone-marrow ailment brought on by lung cancer; in Boston. Hampton produced 60 films, many chronicling the lives of the poor, but he was best known for the 1987 civil rights opus Eyes on the Prize. Of the series, which won a Peabody Award for excellence in journalism, he said, "A hundred civil rights stories had been told, but it was always black people being saved by whites. In Eyes, we brought our people up in history...
Expanding on the theme of mortality, the concert opened with Bartok's The Miraculous Mandarin, Bartok's own exploration of life and death. This one act opus was more of a pantomime than a musical suite. In fact, it was almost a miniature play. While there were no actors, no costumes, no sets, there was one staple of drama--an unmistakable storyline. Ozawa took the role of the narrator and the instruments assumed the voices of characters. The Miraculous Mandarin's format was vaguely reminiscent of the children's symphony, Peter and the Wolf. Its plot, however, was drastically different...
Ostensibly, the opus was not uplifting. But it was rivetting. No one dared to flip a program during The Miraculous Mandarin. The tension mounted to such an unbearable degree that at the end of the piece, the audience collectively exhaled and all of Symphony Hall leaned back from the edge of their seats. It would be foolish to glean any message about death and dying from a pantomime. And yet, paradoxically, this is what the opus' power derived from. An audience could not help but be mesmerized when the tawdry relation between a prostitute and her customer explored the interface...