Word: pianissimo
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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Joel Sachs was the soloist, and though he was always musical his Bach seemed to me too fragile in places and too brusque in others. The employment of a Debussy pianissimo with generous use of the pedal is not always ideally suited to the baroque style. Yet Mr. Sachs showed he could play firmly and resonantly if he chose, even in mezza voce. The orchestral sections were rhythmical and well phrased...
...good, but all of it is imbued in some degree with Walter's ageless enthusiasm. At one point during the rehearsal of the Third Symphony, he exhorted the strings to greater effort, rewarded them with an ecstatic cry: "There you are! And it's paradise! Such a pianissimo! Oh, to be in paradise!" Then Octogenarian Walter paused. "No," he added, "not too soon...
...Crawford was in especially good voice on this occasion. Her voice is not large, but it is appealing in quality--and particularly well suited to the Debussy peces. She spun some beautiful pianissimo tones in the upper middle range. Her only weakness is in notes above high G-sharp, which tend to come out either edgy or breathy. In all the songs John Crawford, her husband, provided exemplary accompaniments...
...Walk as Children of Light," and the virtuosic "Sing unto Him." Throughout the piece, Thompson demonstrates his absolute command of the choral idiom, and ability to produce a variety of effects without lapsing into mere showiness. His cadences perhaps lean too heavily on the received value of a rich pianissimo close, but, for the most part he does not substitute sound effects for more serious and difficult musical tasks, but uses the double chorus as one more element of depth in the composition...
...sometimes surprises with passages of softly breathing lyricism. The stark horror of the murder is conveyed in a howling, brassy crescendo in the orchestra that gives way abruptly to the tinselly tinkle of a café piano; Wozzeck's morbid fears are unforgettably etched in a single, slithering pianissimo in the strings; the cowardice that lurks beneath the captain's bluster becomes apparent in his occasional lapses into shrill, falsetto shrieking...