Word: sonata
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...evening began with an attractive if unremarkable sonata for violin and piano by Michael Friedman. The violin writing was awkward rather than intelligently varied, suffering from repetitious phrase-length and dynamic graduations. The two instruments were carelessly counterpoised in a discontinuously rhapsodic style...
Ravel's Jeux d'eau and Debussy's Feux d'artifice rippled with pinks and light blues. Prokofiev's fiery Sonata No. 7 was dramatic and brutal when it had to be, gentle when that was called for. To Manhattan critics in the audience, it seemed that Hollander had never before bared his inner feelings quite so convincingly...
...technical discipline since Bach. His pellucid textures are never subjected to the spoilage of superfluity but rather to an intensely self-conscious merging of the intoxication of original inspiration with master-craftsmanship. The Octet reflects this Master's modality of intellectual fervor and artistic vigilance. In its investigation of sonata form it also reflects his consciousness of the equal need for innovation and universality, by the light of living tradition. The Ensemble under the direction of conductor James Walker played absolutely splendidly, especially in the variation movement...
...those moments that every performer dreads. Pianist Vladimir Horowitz was halfway through Rachmaninoff's Sonata in B-Flat at Manhattan's Carnegie Hall. And then-poing!-the sound of string #17 (bass A-note) giving way on the Steinway concert grand. An embarrassed unease settled over the hall while a technician frantically made repairs. Finally, Horowitz completed the piece and responded to the thunderous ovation with four encores. Said the famed firm's president, Henry Z. Steinway: "Each time this happens I want to crawl into the woodwork." Soothed Horowitz: "It's like a flat tire...
...equipment is just right for Chopin. He has a powerful and precise technique, a gift for tracing long, soaring lines out of detailed figurations, and an innately tasteful musicality that spurns either maudlin moonbeams or brittle bravura. He puts it all to work in the Byronic B-Minor Third Sonata, playing with dash, sweep and refined lyricism. His performance of the Second, in B-flat minor, offers something more. Although not the performance of a mellow master like Rubinstein, it displays a subtle feeling for the shifting, subterranean currents of Chopin's emotion. There is an urgency...