Word: reiner
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...Thomas himself rose to fame. He is not a spectator's conductor. A solidly built, shock-haired man with a Mozartean profile, he conducts spiritedly but has none of the balletic exuberance of Bernstein or the smooth elegance of Sir Adrian Boult or the icily imperious quality of Reiner. Nor are his performances flamboyantly colored: where Beecham's Mozart tends to be effusively loving, Davis' is simple end unaffected. He combines grace with precision, gravity with rhythmic bite...
...European tradition of Fritz Reiner or Bruno Walter, a pingpong postlude to a concerto would seem outrageous. Katims is a different breed of conductor who, like Lenny Bernstein, combines a showman's flair with an artist's discipline and knows that, despite the enormously increased U.S. appetite for culture, good programs must still be promoted. Says he: "No American conductor can expect simply to wrap himself in an opera cloak and make music...
Mahler: Symphony No. 4 (Lisa Delia Casa; the Chicago Symphony, conducted by Fritz Reiner; RCA Victor, mono and stereo). Even in the flood of Mahler-year recordings, Conductor Reiner's brilliant, surgically clean reading of the Fourth is a standout. Under his baton, the massive Mahler sonorities remain remarkably clear and unclotted, and what often smacks of bombast in other performances emerges as music of dignity and grandeur. Soprano Delia Casa sings the folklike melody of the fourth movement with warmth and charm...
...gained its effect from the almost somnolent alternation of the piano's sinuous theme with the whisper of a drum, the rasp of a snare, the tinkle of a triangle; the wildly fragmented third movement erupted in brief, craggy patterns stitched together only by the surgical precision of Reiner's conducting...
...both conductor and soloist, the performance was an act of devotion. Hungarian-born Fritz Reiner studied under Bartok at the Academy of Music in Budapest. Early in his career, Reiner started championing Bartok's works. "We were both from the same stable," he says, and adds in a rare burst of humility: "Of course, he was the great Bela Bartok, and I was only the little Fritz Reiner...