Word: pianistics
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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PROKOFIEV: THE COMPLETE MUSIC FOR SOLO PIANO (Vox; 2 Vols., each 3 LPs). Composer Sergei Prokofiev was an accomplished concert pianist, and he left a large and lively legacy for his instrument. These recordings include such meditation miniatures as the 20 Visions Fugitives and nine sonatas, among them the famous Seventh, completed during the Battle of Stalingrad. One expects in Prokofiev dissonance, humor, percussiveness and strong drive; yet there is also much sheer lyrical beauty. Budapest-born Gyorgy Sandor plays the melodic passages poignantly and is a sure guide through the harshest chordal clashes-sometimes passionate, sometimes witty, always lucid...
SATIE: PIANO MUSIC VOL. 2 (Angel). Back in the days of Dada, Erik Satie wrote music scored for typewriters, airplane propellers, Morse tickers and lottery wheels. A Montmartre cabaret pianist, he was also a serious composer, puncturing the overblown romanticism of his time by turning out short wry works with such titles as Veritable Flabby Preludes (for a Dog), Disagreeable Sketches, and Chapters Turned Every Which Way. His 50-year-old tidbits still sound fresh and impudent, and are enjoying something of a vogue, due partly to their crisp presentation by Aldo Ciccolini...
BEETHOVEN: SONATA NO. 32 IN C MINOR, OP. 111 (Vanguard). Australian Pianist Bruce Hungerford won critical hurrahs in 1965 when he played five Beethoven sonatas in Carnegie Hall, and the reason is now engraved on vinyl. His interpretation of this late (written five years before the master's death) great two-movement sonata is extremely moving-the first furious buildup dissolving into a tender singing adagio that transcends all that went before...
...Winthrop House Festival began last Tuesday evening with the music of the Belgian avantgarde composer Henri Pousseur. Assisted by pianist Marcelle Mercenier, Pousseur provided an evening of mixed successes and failures, a program of roughly hewn brilliance which can still stand improvement...
...sold many millions of copies, and magazines paid $70,000 for the serial rights. "What success I enjoy," she once said, "comes from my inner convictions, which are little soul-tapers lighting the way." No story could hold a candle to her own 37-year marriage to the late pianist Jacques S. Danielson. Bedeviled by her disapproving parents, the couple were wed in secret in 1915, maintained separate apartments, and for years stole off for rendezvous like illicit lovers. When the story finally got out, Fannie explained, "You see, we're keeping the dew on the rose...