Word: rossini
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...performer's own limitations. These varied works--by Rachmaninoff, Alkan, Busoni, Godowsky and others--are wickedly difficult, yet Hamelin plays them, often at dazzling speeds, with color, power, a long line and unfailing elan. He also performs three of his own witty, equally difficult etudes inspired by Chopin and Rossini...
...name is included in the title, Bartoli remains elusive in the narrative. Hoelterhoff followed the shy off-stage mezzo on and off from 1995 to 1997 and attempted to capture her "rags to riches" story by making a parallel between Bartoli and her signature role as Cinderella in Rossini's Cenerentola. Bartoli's story, however, is quickly overshadowed and nearly buried by the more colorful personalities that she encounters. After a lazy dialogue between the author and Bartoli, we meet Bartoli's doctor, who speaks "with the enthusiasm of someone who had just glimpsed the Zabar's deli counter...
Such a performance obviously garners an encore, and the audience actually brought Shaham back for two--one, a joyfully exaggerated rendition of Rossini's The Barber of Seville (think "Fi-ga-ro!"), the other a surprisingly sedate charmer (arranged by one of the most famous of all violin virtuosi, Fritz Kreisler) entitled The Waltzing Dog--both showing Shaham's ever-present humor. All in all Gil Shaham is truly to be congratulated for a successful glimpse at the world of the virtuoso...
...writer Haruki Murakami's The Windup Bird Chronicle, a hefty 611 page work of near genius, probably won't get the attention that it deserves. Although it spans a comparatively short six months in 1984, beginning with a Japanese thirty-something making a spaghetti breakfast to the beat of Rossini's "The Thieving Magpie," The Windup Bird Chronicle is a noirish, tragi-comic epic worthy of its own praise dictionary. From a bizarre story of the thirty-something's marital and spiritual crisis, Murakami's novel kaleidoscopes out into an exploration of post-WWII Japan that moves from the horrors...
...Rossini's Overture to "L'italiana in Algeri," like most of Rossini's work, was composed in a hurry; opera companies often lost their commissions and (more often) composers procrastinated up to the last moment. Such haste, though, was not evident in the H&H's sparkling performance. The piece is highly whimsical and melodramatic in an almost burlesque manner, making it easy to see why Rossini overtures figure so prominently in cartoon soundtracks. Despite the overture's comic nature, the beautiful oboe solo at the beginning of the piece was highly expressive. A flute and oboe duet later...