Word: pianos
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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Singer Steve Perry led the charge Friday night, walking out in a dark purple suit and dancing frenetically around the stage as the band went into "Dr. Bones," a lightning-fast swing song with a blistering piano riff at the opening. Perry's morbid lyrics clashed with the upbeat music: "Shake, shake, shake and rattle-rattle them Dr. Bones," but you almost didn't notice as Perry leaped about the stage. This was followed later by the sleazy "Here Comes the Snake" which highlighted the sexual undertones lie beneath the band's songs...
...Douglas Allanbrook '48 played the piano reduction of his Ethan Frome for Aaron Copland, who tentatively promised to give the opera a New York premiere after requesting a second play-through. Soon after, however, Copeland finished his own Tender Land, which he produced instead. "Immensely proud" and wanting "the Met or nothing," Allanbrook shelved the score and moved onto other projects, not wanting to waste time selling the piece when he could be writing others. So, for nearly 50 years following its composition, the opera lay unproduced and unpremiered while Allanbrook wrote other pieces and carried on his busy life...
...country. They practice something called "historically informed performance," which means they use instruments designed in and techniques from the period the music was composed in. For the average audience member, all this means is that the flutes and clarinets are brown, the trumpets are longer, and the piano soloist has the chance to play show-and-tell with a gorgeous (and historically accurate) piano...
Norris had his own little idiosyncrasies, too. As the soloist in the "virtuoso" Piano Concerto No. 1 in G Minor and the Capriccio Brillant, Op. 22, which together made up half of the program, Norris was the main event. He had obviously established a rapport with the music and was excited about performance. There were flourishes in his music and motions. At the end of a phrase he would sweep his arms up as if to gesture to the orchestra and say, "Now it's your turn." The piano concerto is one of those pieces that is supposed...
...discover and hear a composer's lesser known works, much like finding more sonnets by Shakespeare or short stories by Hemingway. The beginning of the Capriccio Brillant, Op. 22, was more lovely than brilliant. Short and sweet, it was one of Mendelssohn's three single movement pieces for piano and orchestra...