Word: sawallisch
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1950-1959
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...which Musician, Poet and Countess comment on the Poet's sonnet; the Countess' hushed mirror monologue at the close, with its spun-silver vocal tracery. The performers-notably sopranos Elizabeth Schwarzkopf and Anna Moffo, baritones Hans Hotter and Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau-sing superbly under Conductor Wolfgang Sawallisch. In its flashing orchestral coloration and its soaring vocal lines, Capriccio is an echo of some of the great works of Strauss's youth. At its dress rehearsal the 78-year-old composer said to a friend: "I can do no better." He had done better-in Rosenkavalier and some...
Orff: Der Mond (Rudolf Christ, Hans Hotter, Karl Schmitt-Walter, Helmut Graml, Paul Kuèn, Peter Lagger; the Philharmonia Orchestra and Chorus conducted by Wolfgang Sawallisch; Angel, 2 LPs). German Composer Carl Orff's second opera (1938) is a modern retread of the Grimm fairy tale about four villagers who steal the moon from neighbors, carry it to their graves, finally lose it to St. Peter, who hangs it in the sky to light "the men who still wait in the little garden of the earth." The fragmented, intermittently lyrical score contains snatches of gutbucket jazz and such...
Critics looking for the source of Sawallisch's power have found the germ of it in his approach to the music he conducts; like Toscanini, he tries to immerse his own personality in the personality he finds expressed in the score. The process is so absorbing that even at mealtimes he is likely to sit silent, sunk in mental rehearsal of selections from the file of music stored in his memory. He is largely self-taught. The son of a Munich insurance director, he studied piano privately, had only three months' instruction in conducting...
...Apprenticeship. The solid routine of conducting he learned after the war as assistant conductor at the Augsburg Opera (where he also occasionally tinkled the triangle in the pit). In 1953 he tried out (with 64 other applicants) for the job of music director at Aachen. With a piano score Sawallisch prepared Aachen's cut version of Tannhäuser, learned on his way to the podium for the last act that a 20-page cut had been restored, sailed through the intricate music at sight without a bobble. He was promptly hired...
...accomplishments at Aachen have brought Sawallisch permanent bids from the Berlin Municipal Opera and from Hamburg (he has not made up his mind) and invitations to guest-conduct most of the great orchestras of Europe. The Vienna State Opera and the San Francisco Opera both want him as their guest. And in Germany he has built a personal following so rapidly that last year the Berlin Philharmonic did not even bother to advertise his sold-out guest appearances...