Word: quartets
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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Schubert: Piano Quintet in A Major, "Trout" (Emanuel Ax, piano, with members of the Guarneri Quartet and Julius Levine, double bass); Mozart: Eine kleine Nachtmusik (Guarneri Quartet with Julius Levine; RCA). Schubert's ineffable "Trout" Quintet, so named for its use of the composer's song The Trout as the basis of the fourth movement, is one of the glories of the chamber-music repertory, beloved of pianists and string players (and audiences) everywhere for its grace, wit and warmth. Ax's sensitive, full- toned pianism and the Guarneri's rich ensemble are perfectly matched here, to each other...
...Group, to stop using portions of his play The Crucible in a production called L.S.D. In August, Edward Albee compelled a Texas stage company, Theater Arlington, to cut short its revival of Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? The production had converted Albee's squabbling heterosexual couples into a quartet of gay men. The director points to the oft-repeated rumor that this was Albee's original intent, a claim the playwright has denied...
...quartet decided to take drastic action. Off they went to a neighborhood car-rental agency, where they engaged a car for the next two days. They all piled in and drove a couple of hours' distance from Cambridge--far enough away so that no one they knew would be likely to stumble upon them. For the next day and a half, they locked themselves into a motel room, and crammed intensively for their organic final...
...phone with her boyfriend and threatening to "devote my entire life to crisis counseling for the holiday-impaired. My mother can be the poster child." And young Jeremy (Christopher Fields), just back from the war, slouches about like a lost soul. On closer inspection, though, this engaging sitcom quartet reveals affinities to more tortured theatrical families: O'Neill's Tyrones, Miller's Lomans, the ravaging couples in Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? Jeremy really has lost his soul, lost it for good and all, in the jungles of Viet...
Take your pick of genres and moods. A cabaret evening? Try Haarlem Nocturne, led by lightning-footed Andre De Shields and best described as The Cotton Club with all the terrific dancing put back in. A serious play? In August Wilson's Ma Rainey's Black Bottom, a quartet of black gents sit around talking about music, women, and the demonstrable unfairness of life. Alas, Ma Rainey natters toward its climax like Ibsen gone funky, but it illuminates the talents of worldly-wise actors; one, Charles S. Dutton, spumes anger as the odd man out, striding, not shuffling...