Word: pianist
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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Conductor Mitropoulos is a pious Orthodox Catholic who always wears a crucifix and a medal of the Virgin, almost followed his family's bent toward the monastery. Composer and pianist, he was trained in Greece and Germany, built the orchestra of the Athens Conservatory, made his first U. S. splash in Boston. He looks somewhat like a figure from a can vas by another great Greek, Domenico Theotocopuli (called El Greco in Spain, where he lived). The Mitropoulitan way of playing music is a bit El Grecoesque: lean, angular, edgy, sometimes distorted...
...looking for some swag can curl the hair of the most composed reader. Axel Heyst, mustachioed philosopher who lives in seclusion on the island with his Chinese servant, has heroic proportions. The howling storm which engulfs the last stages of the drama is great theatre. Alma, the helpless, buffeted pianist who escapes with Heyst to the peace of Samburan from oppression in an itinerant girls' band, is a charming romantic touch...
...Waukegan, Ill., where his father ran a haberdashery shop, Benny fiddled with juvenile orchestras, played for dances and firemen's balls. Proud hope of his family in those early years was that Benny would develop into a concert violinist. Instead he teamed at 17 with a vaudeville pianist named Cora Salisbury in an act called "From Grand Opera to Ragtime." As part of his business in this turn (for which he got $15 a week), Benny sawed away with the little finger of his bow hand elegantly extended, pretended to be mesmerized by its motion back & forth...
Rachmaninoff: Concerto No. 3 in D Minor (Sergei Rachmaninoff, pianist, with the Philadelphia Orchestra conducted by Eugene Ormandy; Victor: 9 sides; $5). Composer Rachmaninoff puts one of his war horses through its paces, in Victor's second offering of a Rachmaninoff cycle. First: his Symphony No. 3, with the composer conducting the Philadelphians...
Schubert: Fantasia in C Major ("The Wanderer") (Edward Kilenyi, pianist, with orchestra conducted by Selmar Meyrowitz; Columbia: 6 sides; $3.50). Based in part on a Schubert song, expanded into a concerto by Franz Liszt, this glittering romantic work here gets its best recording to date...