Word: pizzicato
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Their bow tips rise and fall over their nine violins with the discipline of smoothly moving piston rods. Be neath the ping of a pizzicato the big-bellied strings-three violas, three cellos and a bass-growl like well-tuned sports cars. The horns sing out on the curves as the harpsichord taps its deli cate echo in the background...
...observable change of tempo within the very first of the five sections: an event totally unexpected in view of the leaden, unchanging tempi of the preceding work on the program. In the succeeding movements, Wilson created intimate subensembles and experimented with their sonorities; e.g., he combined tuned drums, viola pizzicato, and flute. Of the student composers on the program, Wilson alone managed to go beyond cleverness in working out details to clear action at the perceptible levels of music...
...inital treatment of the theme returns in the parts of Elizabeth and the large choir. The theme dogs the listener for the remaining two parts, along with other simpler, but equally tiresome, motives. For example, Martin delights in mock marches: everywhere there are alternating augmented fifths and repeated sequences, pizzicato, in the basses. Tone pyramids pile up at the end of Part I, at the entrance of the angels in Bethlehem, Part II, in the fields in Part II, and elsewhere...
Simonds was always in full command of his piano, and never over-pedaled. He produced as feathery and pearl-like scales, and as delicate trills as one could desire. (That marvelous soft, ghostly passage in the middle of the first movement, for pizzicato strings and trilling piano, came off especially well...
...work in some ways, since Mr. Stewart contrasts tense, massive climaxes with passages that are almost flip--the sly fillip of the flute at the very end, for instance. The opening is very attractive, with the theme (almost a twelve-tone row) announced softly by the low strings pizzicato to the accompaniment of saucy raps on the snare drum. But in the middle section--a sort of languourous waltz--the sense of direction is lost and the piece begins to maunder. The final movement was transmitted in rather hazy fashion by the unsure playing of the orchestra, but it seemed...