Word: pianistics
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Cineplexes will turn into pre-med lecture halls for the study of leukemia (Marvin's Room, with Meryl Streep and Robert De Niro) and mental illness (Shine, the acclaimed Australian film about pianist David Helfgott). There also will be political seminars on intolerance (The Crucible, with Winona Ryder and Daniel Day-Lewis) and the First Amendment as it applies to porn peddlers (The People vs. Larry Flynt, with Woody Harrelson and Courtney Love...
...Degrees), a CD for Hanukkah with the Dutch band Flairck. Even the Benedictine Monks of Santo Domingo De Silos have a seasonal CD: Christmas Chants (Jade). Still, some of the best holiday music is all-American--Jazz for Joy (Verve), with Abbey Lincoln and others; Blessed Quietness (Atlantic), with pianist Cyrus Chestnut; and Just Say Noel (Geffen), with alternative rocker Beck and jazz rappers the Roots...
...premier (1808), and to some extent to the present day." And understandably so, since it has a deadly combination of mediocre themes and an unncessary number of soloists; this means that each theme is heard at least three times in a row, from the cellist, the violinist, and the pianist, before it is allowed to die. The certainty of this repetition quickly becomes tedious, especially in the first and third movements. Indeed, the third movement, a jaunty Rondo alla polacca, repeatedly tests the listener's patience with cadences that sound like a conclusion, only to keep going and going...
...especially for the occasion. It would be at least understandable if HRO had chosen the piece to spotlight three student musicians: the division of labor, and the relative simplicity of the solo parts, would make it ideal for students. Indeed, it should have been possible to find a student pianist, cellist and violinist who were more than equal to the task--concertmaster Salley Koo '97, for example, who was outstanding in the Shostakovich symphpony...
Instead, the soloists were ringers: BSO cellist Martha Babcock, Boston Chamber Music Society violinist Lynn Chang, and pianist Luisa Vosgerchian, Harvard music professor emerita. The soloists were, of course, quite good, especially Babcock, whose lovely tone compensated for the poverty of her themes. Chang was, if anything, a bit too thin--though this effect may well have been due to Sanders' acoustics, which make it difficult to hear at the extreme edges of each tier of seats. Vosgerchian, meanwhile, was a beatific presence, smiling and swaying joyously throughout; even what appeared to be a nasty fall...