Word: pianos
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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Chopin performed on the piano by invisible hands, a horse-size dog with crocodile claws who feeds on marmalade, chairs that dance and saltcellars that scamper across the dining table. These are some of the fantastic images in The House of the Spirits, a first novel by Isabel Allende that has captivated readers in Latin America and Western Europe. Published in Spanish in 1982, it quickly became a best seller in Spain and many Latin American countries. Foreign-language versions that appeared last year have sold 400,000 copies in France and kept the book on the best-seller list...
...first wave of CDs featured orchestral blockbusters to show off the digital sound's wide dynamic range. The true test of recording technology, however, is the piano. Wow, flutter and tape hiss--ills that LPs are heir to --are all magnified in piano music, but they are drastically reduced, if not entirely eliminated, with CDs. And while flat-earthers may still decry what they hear as a clinical, metallic quality in digital CD recordings, such reservations will disappear as recording engineers adapt their techniques to the demands of the new medium. The best of the current CD piano releases...
Beethoven: The Five Piano Concertos; Six Bagatelles, Op. 126; Andante Favori; "Fur Elise." Vladimir Ashkenazy, piano, with Zubin Mehta conducting the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra; London, 4 CDs. Despite its familiarity, the cycle of Beethoven concertos remains a severe test of mettle for pianists, as well as a handy yardstick for audiences with which to measure them. From the idiosyncratic classicism of the Second, which was the first in order of composition, to the incipient romanticism of the Emperor, the last, is a span of some 20 years but the musical journey of a lifetime...
...music's Mozartean wellspring in a clean, carefully articulated reading. The Third Concerto finds him in a more passionate, but still fundamentally classic, mood; the piece was, after all, written around 1800, while Beethoven's teacher Haydn was still alive. The revolutionary Fourth Concerto, in which the piano daringly speaks before the orchestra, gets an introspective, reflective performance in keeping with its contemplative nature. Only in the Fifth Concerto does Ashkenazy's rectitude inhibit him from the kind of large-scale reading the Emperor can support, yet his nimble style is fully in keeping with his restrained approach...
...they grew, is to measure the change in public taste. McCarthy treated her Ivy maidens with defoliating wit; Segal bastes his Harvard yardbirds with sophomore-level prose: "The athletic season culminated with the many confrontations against Yale" and "While it was arguable that his interpretation of the complete Beethoven piano concerti was the best thing put on disk during the previous twelve months, it was indisputable that his publicity campaign was nonpareil...