Word: pianissimo
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BEETHOVEN: QUARTET IN A MINOR OPUS 132 (RCA Victor). This intricate work was written 25 years after the septet and sounds a world apart, especially in this crisp, exact performance by the Juilliard String Quartet. Technically, the Juilliard is superb; the pianissimo passages, for example, are feather-light and still warm, but the third movement, the "song of thanksgiving offered to the divinity by a convalescent," sounds curiously reserved...
...played attentively. They thundered when the occasion demanded, or played under the chorus's pianissimo, which was very soft, Randall Thompson's orchestrations are more or less routine work for instrumentalists; the strings played what they had well, the wind solos were good, but not always exactly in tune...
Many voices are impressive at one dynamic level and not at another. But here was a voice of supreme quality throughout all gradations, from full-bodied fortissimo down to a barely audible pianissimo. My evaluation was hardly unique, and Price's performance won him the Theatre World Award. (Unfortunately, the recording of the show was a limited special edition and is not commercially available...
...have seldom heard a chorus sing so unanimously. Technical details were executed to a man, providing in a song such as "I'll Go to the Valley" a pianissimo that Verdi would have been jealous of. When the director called for lightness, they sang like five men instead of fifty; when he called for force, they bowled the audience over...
...dynamics for all the works on the program. In "Deutsches Magnificat," by Heinrich Schutz, he established a different mood for each phrase, and built up a gradual, carefully controlled crescendo for the piece's final cadence. Forbes made Hans Hassler's distressful, chromatic motet very convincing with sudden pianissimo phrases; the words were never blurred when the chorus sang softly...