Word: sonata
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...years it has been an unwritten rule, perfectly understandable although rather archaic, that the Israeli Philharmonic Orchestra must not perform the works of German Composer Richard Wagner. Richard Strauss was verboten as well until 1953, when Violinist Jascha Heifetz played a Strauss sonata -a performance that later moved a zealot to clout him on the right wrist with an iron bar outside his hotel. Now the orchestra's directors have decided that "the time has come for a change . . . because of the paramount demands of freedom of art." So, presumably, Wagner and Strauss will now be heard in Israel...
...DEBUSSY: SONATA FOR VIOLIN AND PIANO (Everest). In Debussy's ethereal duet, written the year before he died, the sinuous lines of the violin float on air while the piano furnishes ground swells of sound. Debussy's directions for the second movement-"fantastic and light"-set the entire mood for French Violinist Christian Ferras and Pianist Pierre Barbizet. They also play Fauré's Second Violin Sonata, written like Debussy's in 1917 and likewise impressionist in manner, but more restrained...
...BRAHMS: SONATAS FOR CELLO AND PIANO, NOS. 1 AND 2 (Mercury). Cellist Janos Starker and Pianist Gyorgy Sebok play the duets with the broad range of feeling demanded, especially in the great F major sonata (No. 2). But they never rhapsodize. Among his fellow romantics, Brahms was a classicist; so, one gathers from these banked fires, is Starker...
Last week the Boschaps performed a rich, tastefully executed program at Manhattan's Town Hall. In Benjamin Britten's Fantasy for Oboe and Strings, the trio of strings spun delicately interlocking webs around the oboe's sober solo; Francis Poulenc's sprightly Sonata for Horn, Trumpet and Trombone was charmingly carried off like the playful banterings of back-fence gossips. The evening's major piece, Schubert's String Quintet in C, grew out of the stage like a tree of sound, alive and shapely in every line. The musicians played as it is seldom...
Tireless Rounds. There was chamber music with some of the "local talent" like Heifetz and Piatigorsky. Once, the story goes, Albert Einstein began to play a violin and piano sonata with Rubinstein. Einstein missed a cue in one passage and came in four beats late. They started again, and again Einstein flubbed. They began once more, and the great scientist again missed the cue. Finally, the exasperated Rubinstein cried, "For God's sake, Professor, can't you even count up to four...