Word: pianos
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1980-1989
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...both solid and pleasing, though not earth shaking. The title track, an up-tempo soul number, is reminiscent of "Street Legal", Dylan's last widely popular work. It blends a bassy rhythm with gospel-like backing vocals very effectively. "Heart of Mine", which follows, is a pretty, piano-based tune with a calypso beat that lends it a tropical flavor. A subtle relationship seems to exist between the two songs. Both deal with love: the first viewing it as a necessary drug and the second warning of excess...
...classroom is homely and snug, barely 20 ft. square. In a corner on hangers, squeezed behind a cheap upright piano, hangs a row of blue choir robes. The 25 gentlemen of the Bunn Bible Class (average age about 70), file in smiling, touching each other gently. By 10 a.m. they have eased themselves into folding chairs, as have a cluster of wives and old friends' widows. Class President Adrian Newton grasps his Bible and introduces this Sunday's teacher: speaking on "Repentance and Restoration," the right honorable Senator Jesse Helms...
...Chopin: Piano Sonata No. 2 and other works (Ivo Pogorelich, piano; Deutsche Grammophon). The fastest way to a big career these days seems to lie in not winning a major competition. When Pianist Youri Egorov failed to make the finals of the Van Cliburn four years ago, outraged fans launched him by raising an equivalent of the first-prize money themselves. Similarly, when Yugoslav-born Ivo Pogorelich, 22, was eliminated before the last round of the recent Chopin competition in Warsaw, one judge, Pianist Martha Argerich, resigned in protest. The incident became a musical cause...
...composer Luigi Dallapiccola in its lyricism and sophisticated melodic charm. Harbison sets dark, vivid images from Montale's Le Occasioni (1939) allusively, often employing the familiar device of musical tone painting. In the ninth poem, for example, the mezzo sings of a darting green lizard, and the piano responds with a scaly slither. But the music is much more than a literal transcription of the poetry, for Harbison has given it a deeper layer of meaning in transforming it into song. The most unstable interval in music, the tritone, stalks the cycle relentlessly, a musical metaphor for the dissolution...
...Piano Quintet, for piano and string quartet, is leaner, harsher and, finally, less successful. It has a distinctively "American" sound derived from Charles Ives, opening with a questioning overture of bold, disjunct octaves. The composer then weakens his argument with | three short character pieces | that, while agreeable, do nothing to further the work's emotional progress. The finale, however, is a heartfelt Elegia that ends with a haunting repeated fragment in the piano, dissolving in resignation and despair...