Word: pianists
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...sequel's producers had virtually no trouble recruiting the cast they wanted. Some prominent athletes-Decathlon Champion Rafer Johnson and former U.S.C. Running Back Anthony Davis -volunteered to play minor roles. Cafe Pianist-Singer Bobby Short flew to Los Angeles on a few days' notice to play himself in an early 1960s literary party scene. The biggest coups by far were the casting of James Earl Jones and Marlon Brando. Jones had originally been lined up to play Chicken George in Roots 1. Had he done so, he would not have been usable as Haley in Roots...
...which works devastatingly well on the college audience. The big problem is the caricatures--of course we're going to be alienated when the supporting characters are psychos, ghouls, vacuous chatterboxes, intellectual snobs and snots, or vegetables with fixed, idiot smiles. Jack Nicholson plays--superlatively--a rich, formerly preppie pianist who has abandoned the family mansion--a mausoleum on an island off Washington--and gone to work for an oil company in the wilds of California, as a hardhat. Then he returns home for a visit. Raphelson gives the mansion and grounds a wonderfully icy, creepy feeling, and the whole...
...stars are the animals: Kermit, the pure and reasonable frog; the ineffable Miss Piggy, every circumferential inch a lady; Rowlf the Dog, a philosophical pianist; Fozzie Bear, the can't-stand-up comic; and The Great Gonzo, the magnificently inferior creature whose inventors insist, despite damning evidence, that he is not a turkey. Monsters are the remaining important category of beings: such enormities as Sweetums, who is about 9 ft. tall and covered with a three-day growth of brownish shag, and Thog, who is a good deal bigger and still growing, lend chaos to the goings...
Debussy: Préludes, Vol. 1 (Pianist Arturo Benedetti Michelangeli, Deutsche Grammophon). Any recording by the reclusive Michelangeli is an event. His Debussy is almost transparent. Light seems to flicker and dance throughout, creating moments of incandescent beauty. The carefree Les collines d'Anacapri and the eerie stillness of La cathédrale engloutie are special joys...
Beethoven: The Complete Piano Sonatas (Pianist Alfred Brendel, Philips; 13 LPs). The 32 sonatas, which explore every facet of the keyboard, are an Olympian effort for a performer. Brendel, a meticulous scholar and flawless technician, concentrates on incisive detail rather than drama. If such sonatas as the Appassionata lack grandeur, one can still admire the impeccable musical lines...