Word: prokofievs
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...even more giddy than Ballet Theater's version; Dream Pictures is a pointless period piece that does, however, include a hilarious dance by three doddering octogenarian couples. While it is at the Met, the company will offer the first U.S. performances of Romeo and Juliet, with the Prokofiev score and new choreography by Frederick Ashton. Then it will visit ten cities in the eastern U.S. and Canada to give more Americans a chance to see ballet storyful, mellow and magical...
...governmental austerity ruling that cut back their budget 30%, officials of Venice's famed International Festival of Contemporary Music had canceled the prestigious operatic premiéres of earlier years (e.g., Stravinsky's own 1951 Rake's Progress, Britten's 1954 Turn of the Screw, Prokofiev's 1955 Flaming Angel), pinned all their hopes and a large part of their remaining budget on the world premiére of Stravinsky's Canticum Sacrum ad Honorem Sancti Marci Nominis (Canticle to Honor the Name of St. Mark...
...premiere was 25 years late. In West Berlin's ultramodern Conservatory Concert Hall one night last week, a large crowd gathered for the first performance of Piano Concerto No. 4, written by Russia's late great Sergei Prokofiev in 1931. At the keyboard was East Berlin's Pianist Siegfried Rapp, impeccable in white tie and tails. There was only one odd thing about the soloist: his right sleeve was empty and pinned to his coat...
...stubbornly refused to abandon his virtuoso career. He commissioned and performed Ravel's Concerto for Left Hand, two works by Richard Strauss, and Benjamin Britten's Diversions on a Theme. Wittgenstein (now 68 and a teacher in Manhattan) also commissioned-but never understood or played-the Prokofiev concerto that was premièred last week by Siegfried Rapp, a musician with a story similar...
Always on the alert for some way to widen his scope, Rapp spotted Prokofiev's left-hand concerto on a list, wrote to his widow in Moscow to ask her for the score. As the music was heard in Berlin last week (with the Metropolitan Opera's Martin Rich conducting), it no longer seemed aggressively modern, as it had to Wittgenstein, but more like an old friend. The whole piece is sprayed with crotchety harmonies, but it always makes the kind of leeway towards a safe harmonic port that is part of Prokofiev's charm. The solo...