Word: pianissimo
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...watch. The Symphony also included strangely disturbing phrases, which gradually built into loud and powerful sections: once again, Mr. Mehta was in full control, wielding a very precise energy over the orchestra. The final section involves a sudden shift, from an extremely loud fortissimo to a barely audible pianissimo--and Mehta employed finger-tip control in the transition. Ending the work was a mysterious piano, celeste, and harp trio, and the audience's reaction, which was hardly overwhelming, was also a bit baffled...
...further observed that "when one wolf starts howling, like Franco Corelli in Verdi's 'Di quella pira' from 11 Trovatore, the rest of the wolves join in, as in the choral sections of 'Di quella pira.' " He found that the best wolf virtuosos "start pianissimo, swell to a messa di voce to the sixth above, hold it sweetly and purely, then perhaps embellish to the upper partial before going down to a pianissimo and trailing off on an inconclusive microtonality near the tonic." Although some wolves have a range of more than an octave, Schonberg...
...success as a New Leftist taking over National Review. The odds against survival are so great that only an editor with a strong, fixed idea, uninhibited by the conventional wisdom of his field, would test them. In little more than two years, the Washington Monthly, which offers a unique, pianissimo brand of muckraking, has beaten the odds: it is attracting readers who count in the capital and the advertisers who may soon make it a profitable labor of conviction...
...Military Philosophers, the ninth of the series, is roughly from 1942 to V-E day, an era that would seem to call for the verbal equivalent of massed bands, with effects by real cannon in the manner of Tchaikovsky's 1812 Overture. Though Powell's narration continues pianissimo, the result is far from flat. His prose is a percussion instrument, delicate but forceful because precise...
...today, the man whom the Viennese called "the master of pianissimo" has a resounding worldwide reputation. "Probably," says Conductor Robert Craft, "there isn't a composer writing now, or hardly a composition written-even electronic-in which his influence can't be traced...