Word: pianos
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...history are often easy to identify: the birth of the romantic symphony with Beethoven's Eroica, for example, or the founding of German Romantic opera in Weber's Der Freischütz, or the full flowering of the twelve-tone system with Schoenberg's Op. 25 Piano Suite. Endings, however, are more elusive. When precisely did the Baroque conclude? Did the symphony die with Brahms or Mahler, or is it still a vital form? These are moot questions...
...Cannery Row. For one thing, no one seems to do any work. And there are some rich people in town, but there's nowhere for them to live. And there's a guy who plays trumpet on the wharf whenever anything romantic happens. And there's also a piano on the wharf (and another in, of all places, Doc's laboratory) so that Mac can liven up spontaneous parties with his honky tonk jazz. And everyone speaks in cliches, and the sky is always purple and torrid like one of those sea scenes from Woolworth...
...every twist and unexpected turn, illustrating its ripples with flowing figurations of their own. The third movement's bold, thrusting opening is similarly reflected in the dance, which includes some rapid-fire footwork for D'Amboise inspired by the rat-a-tat-tat of the piano. Paradoxically, Robbins is most, and least, successful with his extended bagatelle in the second movement. Into a vivid world of women - the girls in dark red, Calegari and Kistler in brightest white - Robbins suddenly injects the dark, powerful presence of Mel Tomlinson, effecting a stark, dramatic contrast. He then spoils the mood...
George Gershwin was the archetypal American composer: a Tin Pan Alley tunesmith with high artistic aspirations. The man who set the country humming Oh, Lady, Be Good and Someone to Watch Over Me also wrote more formally complex, jazz-tinged "crossover" works like Rhapsody in Blue, three Preludes for piano, and most ambitious of all, the Concerto in F for piano and orchestra...
Gershwin was never entirely comfortable in the high-toned world of "serious" art. But Robbins is; his sense of structure-of how to hold a multimovement piece together-is stronger and surer. Against an art deco backdrop with a huge "G," Robbins enshrines the soul of Gershwin's piano in four crisply moving soloists, led by the technically dazzling, ebullient Darci Kistler. He impersonates the orchestra with a corps of 24 dancers-a dozen of each sex-and follows the episodes of the music as if he were charting a graph. Yet, where Gershwin's music ultimately degenerates...