Word: scherzo
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...Brahms Trio bears certain resemblances to the Beethoven work. It opens with a soft piano solo. The working out of the Scherzo is similar. The theme of the slow movement is again presented by the solo piano in alternation with the strings; and it is another example of a soft, divine profundity unfolded through simple conjunct motion...
Both Smithers and Landau should be made to listen to the Queen Mab vocal scherzetto and orchestral scherzo from Berlioz' "dramatic symphony" Romeo and Juliet before Smithers sets foot on the Festival stage again. In fact, no director should essay this play until he has studied all of the Berlioz masterpiece, the only work based on Shakespeare's play that surpasses the original. Significantly, in his Sunday appraisal of this production, the New York Times' Brooks Atkinson was also moved to invoke the Berlioz work. Although he made some inaccurate statements about both Berlioz and his symphony, his basic point...
...program was ambitious and familiar, the only big surprise being a rare performance of the nine bars which were to be the Scherzo of the Schubert Unfinished Symphony. The first two movements were given a measured, careful reading which was typical of the whole performance. The concert opened with Corelli's Concerto Grosso Op.6, No.1, giving the strings a chance to shine, followed by a gracious but strong Beethoven 8th Symphony. The closing number, Rimsky-Korsakov's Russian Easter Overture called upon the sonority and balanced ensemble work which is perhaps the orchestra's greatest asset...
...wonder of this sordid and symbolic tale is that it is suffused with compassion, heightened by the remarkable music Alban Berg wrote for it. The score, set in the tilted frame of nontonality, is carefully cast in a variety of classical musical forms: suite, passacaglia, sonata, fanatasie and fugue; scherzo, etc. The huge (113 instruments) orchestra sometimes bellows in brassy rages, sometimes shrieks in lines of shrill angularity, sometimes surprises with passages of softly breathing lyricism. The stark horror of the murder is conveyed in a howling, brassy crescendo in the orchestra that gives way abruptly to the tinselly tinkle...
...Rochberg's Symphony No. 2, as performed by the Cleveland Orchestra under George Szell, was a thickly textured, darkly intense work that moved in a riptide of conflicting rhythms and clashing dissonances. It opened with an impassioned theme in the strings and horns, unfolded into a busy, brusque scherzo touched with jazz. The finale built to a rushing climax, then subsided in a resigned, dramatically simple theme played by strings and woodwinds. The audience could summon up only polite applause. But Cleveland's Composer-Critic Herbert Elwell found Rochberg's mastery of the tone row remarkable...