Word: pianists
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Rudel applied for a job at the New York City Opera in 1943, when the company was still being formed, and worked his way up via rehearsal pianist, coach, scene changer and even chorister when the occasion demanded. He was named director...
Typecasting is a hazard not only for actors but for pianists. Yet for listeners it has certain advantages. There is always a little extra pleased surprise when a celebrated Beethoven thunderer like Viennese Pianist Alfred Brendel also proves a fine interpreter of Mozart, as he just has in this summer's Mostly Mozart Festival at New York's Philharmonic Hall. Folding his gawky body (6 ft. 1½ in., 164 lbs.) down on the piano stool like some large, clumsy bird, Brendel at times brought an almost wren-like elegance to the formalized passion of Mozart...
Classic Bounds. All pianists have to compromise between force and agility in order to combine maximum sonority with maximum speed. Brendel's playing shows no compromise. He gives most of the credit to Edwin Fischer, the Swiss pianist and teacher who was known as both an intellectual classicist and a keyboard technician. Like Fischer, he is able to play passionately without breaking the bounds of classicism...
...Fantastic Island (1935), a book Ian Fleming obviously ransacked when he wrote Dr. No, the villain is a mad Russian pianist who owns an isolated Galapagos island, feeds his guests to a horde of clacking crabs and explains this little character problem in a marvelously sappy 19th century trope. "I am impelled to unspeakable desires," he sighs contentedly, "when my fingers wander over the keys...
...company's Red Seal line. An engagingly brash, native New Yorker who got his start 22 years ago as a clerk in a Manhattan discount-record store, Munves approached Artur Rubinstein with the idea of a Rubinstein's greatest-hits LP. "You are a vampire," said the pianist, and refused. But Rubinstein did go along with a reassemblage of old items called The Chopin I Love. This month, Munves brought out eleven LPs in a new "Composers' Greatest Hits" series. One of the albums was devoted to Gustav Mahler, neatly capitalizing on the use of his music...