Word: sonata
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...Conservatory, does not have to worry about competitions for a while. In addition to his first-prize money, he won a $400 gold watch for the best performance of Structure for Piano, composed for the contest by Willard Straight, $300 for the best interpretation of Copland's Piano Sonata, the opportunity to play with twelve major U.S. orchestras, a three-month tour of Europe, a debut recital at Carnegie Hall in April, and a contract for further concertizing in the U.S., Canada and Latin America...
...STRING QUARTETS NOS. 1 AND 2 (Crossroads). Chamber music, particularly that of the 20th century, is often an acquired taste. But Leo Janáĉek wrote hummable, folk-flavored and dramatic pieces for strings. His first quartet was inspired by Tolstoy's chilling story The Kreutzer Sonata and is played with special eloquence and style by the Janáĉek String Quartet...
JOSEPH SZIGETI (Mercury). The 74-year-old violinist plays mostly sonatas by four modern masters: Debussy, Ives, Honegger and Webern. The Debussy Sonata in C Minor is competent interpretation, but Szigeti really excels in tenser linear works -the eclectic Ives in his only violin sonata and the neo-Baroque Honegger (Sonata No. 7), with its complex, difficult ornamentation, sound fresh and clear. The record's highlight is four pieces (Opus 7) by Anton Webern, none longer than 72 seconds, in which the stripped-down starkness of modern music and its intolerance of repetition or romance are emphasized by Szigeti...
...Festival in Colorado hardly seemed to notice. Onstage, the pianist leaned more intently over the keyboard and subtly adjusted his tone to bring the music out over the sound of the shower. Wet or dry, it was an excellent performance of Beethoven's last and perhaps greatest piano sonata (in C minor, Opus 111), a piece that alternates between demonic fury and lyric contemplation and requires more than mere competence to bring...
Brilliant as Sokolov was, some judges felt that Dichter was incomparable. During the second round, he played the Schubert Sonata in A Major and Stravinsky's Petrushka in a dazzling bravura style that prompted Soviet Pianist Lev Vlasenko (who ran second to Cliburn in 1958) to cheer him as "the best musician among the piano finalists...