Word: pianists
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Prokofiev: Concerto No. 4 for Piano (Left Hand) and Orchestra (Rudolf Serkin; Columbia). This controversial concerto was written in 1931 for Paul Wittgenstein, the one-armed pianist, but languished unheard for 25 years. "Aggressively modern," snorted Wittgenstein, refusing to play it. His was a harsh verdict, judging by Serkin's performance...
...trio to face the five red-robed judges at Karlsruhe was stocky Hans Clemens, 61, who peered with interest at an exhibit table covered with the tools of his trade: cameras, tape recorders, microscopes, radios, films and suitcases with secret compartments. As he told it, Clemens had been a pianist as a youth in Dresden, but changed keys and became a Nazi police official in 1933. He headed the Dresden office of the dreaded SS security service. During World War II he commanded an execution squad in Italy that killed 330 hostages and for his savagery won the title...
...shot restorative. Each summer since, about 50 similarly dedicated instrumentalists and singers from abroad have turned up for the series on nothing more than Menotti's promise of bed and board. They have performed everything from 13th century motets to Korean twelve-tone, are directed by Georgia-born Pianist Charles Wadsworth, a noted lieder accompanist who performed at one of Jackie Kennedy's White House soir...
Sunday night's concert was the most uniformly excellent event of the Festival. It began with the American debut of a fine French pianist, Martial Solal. Solal showed that a solid classical background can be a great asset to a jazz musician. Harmonically, he is strongly influenced by modern European classical music. Otherwise, his main influence seems to be Bud Powell, who now lives in France. Solal avoids the "funky" cliches of jazz piano, but preserves a real jazz feeling. Working out his ideas with both hands, embellishing his phrases with trills, he created some wonderfully elegant improvisations...
Then I Attack. "I play what I feel is needed," says Makim Touré, a Guinean disquaire at Paris' King Club who plays his twin turntables with all the grace and flamboyance of a 19th century concert pianist. When too many dancers take the floor in France, the compleat disquaire strikes them into their chairs by playing a French song-recurrent proof of the popular theory that Frenchmen hate their own music. To liven things up, disquaires turn to Ray Charles or a hully-gully by The Cookies...