Word: rachmaninoff
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Plano Recital--Craig Smith, planist; music of Schubert, Rachmaninoff and Liszt; Peasant Stock Restaurant, 415 Washington St., Somerville...
...opera proved popular, with 83 performances in Leningrad and 97 in Moscow before it offended the delicate sensibilities of the Soviet commissars, who denounced it in Pravda as "Muddle Instead of Music." Shostakovich, the only important 20th century Russian composer who worked entirely under the Soviet system (Rachmaninoff and Stravinsky eventually settled in America, and Prokofiev spent many years abroad), found himself labeled an "enemy of the people" and for a while even feared for his life. It took him more than a year to restore his reputation as a good Soviet citizen with his Fifth Symphony. Meanwhile, Lady Macbeth...
...strong. "My reaction is spontaneous," he says. "Once I've chosen the music for a ballet, I completely inundate myself in it. I listen to nothing else, so that it becomes part of me-I'm drenched in it." For the effervescent Rhapsody, Ashton selected Rachmaninoff's Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini, reaching a climax with a pas de deux at the radiant 18th Variation. "You have to get in tune with the composer," says Ashton. "I do what the music tells...
Sadie can be rough on his predecessors at Grove 5: "The articles on Rachmaninoff and Richard Strauss were not worthy of the subjects ... Organist and Composer William Wolstenholme left no impact on the history of music and he shouldn't have been in at all." The new edition is tougher and less sentimental. Sadie's own piece of Mozart, the longest single biography (89 columns) in the dictionary, is a good example. Says Sadie: "Mozart was not just a victim of infirmities and circumstances. He alienated potential patrons and that's partly why he died poor...
...just any dancers. The work is dominated by Mikhail Baryshnikov, who is appearing as a guest artist. Ashton has created unexampled leaps and spins (and combinations of the two), as if he saw in Baryshnikov the spirit of Paganini, who raised violin virtuosity to a demonic level, and of Rachmaninoff, who did much the same for the piano. The charm of the work is that it never becomes the visual equivalent of piano busting, a mere showcase...