Word: pizzicatos
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Walking into such a pizzicato brouhaha merely seemed to strengthen Barlow's resolve. Tristan, it turns out, is in her tea leaves or, rather, the numerology she is fascinated by. It was the first opera she ever attended, a Met performance with Astrid Varnay. When Barlow sang the role the first time herself, it was in Kiel, Germany, in 1967, and the singer she replaced was, of course, Varnay...
...only problem was a slight sluggishness, caused not by the tempo but by the attacks, which were not quite sharp, or quite clean. A pizzicato effect, in the second movement, was missing. The French horns and bassoons were excellent, and the symphony--like most well-known pieces--was a definite crowd-pleaser. One departure from the strictly traditional was the use of only one bass. Most orchestras the Bach society's size would have at least 3 or 4 double basses. Yet the use of only one was quite pleasant, giving the orchestra a buoyant sound...
...Today's electronic composer no longer bothers to imitate nature the way Vivaldi did in The Four Seasons. Tape recorder in hand, he simply camps at the seashore or in a rain forest, and lets Mother Nature herself compose an accelerando of breaking waves or a pizzicato polka of storm effects. Then he adds electronic sounds-whirrr, ping, eeeeeee, r-r-r-roar-and voila!, the new art of sonic environments, "music" to the ears of those who would rather "hear" sound than "listen" to it. Walter (Switched-On Bach) Carlos here presents four tone poems-spring, summer, fall...
...combined volumes and timbres fitted perfectly with the orchestra. The concert had opened with Glinka's Kamarinskaya, a pleasant diversion which showed off the Orchestra's abilities admirably. The central section of the piece sounds very much like Beethoven symphony extracts, but the similarity ends in a series of pizzicato passages. These were done in perfect synchronization and with great resonance...
...James Yannatos presented an unusually vigorous selection of works, fortunate in view of the late hour. The program opened with a Bela Bartok suite of Rumanian folk dances orchestrated in 1917 by the composer from the piano solo version. The orchestral playing was excellent; big, clear, and confident. The pizzicato passages were especially impressive for their precision of execution by such a large group. But for content, the Bartok was not satisfying as an opener because the sketches are extremely short and lack formal compositional unity...