Word: ostinatos
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...outset, Androcles' name in Greek-alphabet capitals hovers over the stage. A yellow scrim hangs in front, with sunflowers traced on it. As Tharon Musser's lighting changes, suggestions of a lion's head appear; and shortly some slinky jazz with a perky clarinet over a tonic-dominant ostinato ushers in the Lion (Ted Graeber) with a lioness (Jane Farnol). The two animals perform a semidance pantomime, until the Lion gets rid of his partner. Shaw's script calls for no lioness, but this seems a quite acceptable bit of directorial padding. When alone, the Lion does some pushups, indulges...
...Prometheus, what little melody was left was expertly sung by U.S. Baritone Carlos Alexander as Prometheus and Australian Mezzo Althea Bridges as the tormented lo. The other singers, obscured by grotesque masks and headdresses, declaimed the drama in incantatory drones, while the orchestra rolled along in seemingly endless ostinato figures or erupted with brash punctuations...
...Musser's eerie lighting makes it quite unnecessary to add the off-stage roll on the cymbal. And must we have another crude cymbal roll when Brutus runs on his sword? As a background to the aura of death at Philippi, Susa has also introduced on the harp an ostinato pattern from the Dies irae plainchant, which recalls the identical ostinato near the end of Rachmaninoff's tone-poem Isle of the Dead. At any rate, I suspect that even Sousa would have done better than Susa
...entrance of the guitar player--who obliged with one strain at the very end of the movement. In the second, the sole twelve-tone piece, pizzicato strings, harp and per cussion executed difficult rhythms gracefully if not perfectly. At the end of the third piece, a dirge with an ostinato bass, the orchestra turned into a chorus and sang the final chord. Happily, Biss repeated the performance for an amused audience...
...orchestra's balance faltered only through the domination of an exceptionally snarling brass section. The frequent long building passages, leading to the inevitable climax of a loud brass phrase under a string ostinato and trilling winds, were expertly guided by the Orchestra's regular conductor, Attilio Poto. Adequate preparation and generally vigorous playing made austere work interesting to hear but one looked forward to the imminent reward of the Faure at hand...