Word: pianistics
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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BEETHOVEN: THE COMPLETE VIOLIN AND PIANO SONATAS (4 LPs; Columbia). Released separately over the past few years, these performances by Violinist Zino Francescatti and Pianist Robert Casadesus are now complete. The earlier sonatas are especially fine, for the French artists are marvelously attuned to the lyricism, elfin wit, and inventive refinements of the young Beethoven. Other violinists may play the works more romantically (David Oistrakh on Philips) or more brilliantly (Jascha Heifetz on RCA Victor), but their pianists do not always live up to them, and the understanding partnership of the two virtuosos in the new series is rewarding...
...garden variety cleric usually isn't a CIA-trained expert on Russia. Nor has he been instrumental in organizing a movement which profoundly affected the fabric of American society (the freedom rides of the early '60's.) Nor does he yet harbor a secret desire to be a concert pianist...
...glass of spirits with a straw near the keyboard; it is soon drained. Irma plays a little less surely after that. But she always tries to answer requests, except for songs written after 1932. She died then. Skeptics claim that the music is played by a hidden, live pianist on a keyboard mechanically mated to the keyboard that shows, and that the drinks are emptied through a hole in the bottom of the glass. The management sneers at such ridiculous unoccult thoughts...
...purists cry "Heresy" many people agree. They argue that the human ear, adaptable instrument that it is, after repeated hearings of a note-perfect performance of Tchaikovsky's Fifth Symphony in all the glory of living stereo," will never again be satisfied with a fallible human performance. Pianist Glenn Gould has not played a concert in a year and a half because "that way of presenting music is passe. If there is a more viable way to reach audiences, it has to be through recordings. Concerts as they are now known will not outlive the 20th century...
...controversy rages. Perhaps the late Artur Rodzinski said it all during a recording session with Pianist Paul Badura-Skoda. Listening to a patched-up playback of one of their tapes Badura-Skoda exclaimed: "Listen! Isn't that magnificent?" "Yes," replied the maestro dryly, "don't you wish you could play that...