Word: prokofievs
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Meaningful Traces. Handy refined his style playing classically oriented jazz with small symphony orchestras on the West Coast, studied modern classical composers such as Prokofiev and Stravinsky. He has become so skilled in instrumental techniques and music theory that many jazzmen go to him for instruction. "Handy," says Mingus, "is a musician with a brain...
...from its recordings, this was the orchestra's first visit to the U.S. As debuts go, it was a grueling test. Ansermet (pronounced ahn-ser-may) led his 115-member ensemble through a symphonic obstacle course, accepting the challenge of some of the thorniest works of Stravinsky, Bartok, Prokofiev and Berg. As if that were not enough, Ansermet then jetted to Manhattan to conduct five equally demanding works with the New York Philharmonic last week as part of its month-long Stravinsky festival...
...PROKOFIEV: SYMPHONY NO. 6 (RCA Victor). The fourth album in the Boston Symphony's Prokofiev series is devoted to his next to last symphony, which commemorated the end of World War II. Written when Prokofiev was a semi-invalid, the sixth is largely elegiac, for "wounds that can't be healed." Erich Leinsdorf distinguishes subtly between each muted mood, first sorrowing, then celebrating with sober splendor, and kicking off the traces for a jaunty, jazzy finale...
Regardless of what people have heard about this 28-year-old bird boy, no first-time listener is ever fully prepared for the major poet who lives in a minor-sized body (5 ft. 6 in., 132 Ibs.). When he played Prokofiev's wildly percussive and majestically colorful Second Piano Concerto last week, even the critics were astounded to hear every note of the labyrinthine cadenza; most pianists usually cut it down to their size. After wading through the cadenza, it seemed hardly difficult at all for Ashkenazy to master the rest of the piece-lightening it with brilliant...
...cool off. They may wonder when he sits down at the piano, but they stay to pay homage to a singing tone, a clarity of expression and a restrained romanticism that weaves Chopin's Ballades into filigrees of fire, plumbs the mysteries of Beethoven, clarifies the passions of Prokofiev. Even the great Emil Gilels, a Muscovite who prefers to play by the Russian rules, agrees with the fans: "Ashkenazy is small, but the grand piano is not too big for him. He does what he wants with it. Others who are big come to the piano...