Word: sonata
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That is the emotional cycle of The Ghost Sonata, whose second and third acts end with the quoted lines. I mean no irreverence by the analogy: if one does not see the play as a record of the author's shifting state of mind one must suppose it simply lopsided, shambling and confused. The playwright excites our sympathies as none of the actual characters can. For this is a "dream play"; the characters are at best ghosts; and the central thing is the controlling mind of the dreamer...
Trying to imagine the Strindberg who wrote The Ghost Sonata, I think of a devoted Nietzschean suddenly confronted by a sweet little girl holding a lollipop and an affectionate puppydog. For an unguarded moment he is charmed; but the girl goes her way, and the play-wright reflects that perhaps the candy only reveals her materialism, and the dog her slavish dependence on pets. He becomes hopelessly despairing, then immeasurably compassionate. He writes a poem...
...easy to discount these weaknesses. Chris and Bitte Rawson's new translation gives a solid idiomatic script that never sounds awkward. Stephen Tucker has designed a brilliant, extremely compact set: the costumes and music are admirable. Babe has directed a Ghost Sonata that is a capable and striking rendition of Strindberg's fantasies and obsessions...
...first recording in three years, Horowitz selected works of composers with whom he has long been identified-Chopin's Sonata No. 2 in B-Flat Minor, Rachmaninoff's Etude-Tableau in C Major and Etude-Tableau in E-Flat Minor, Schumann's Arabesque, Liszt's Hungarian Rhapsody No. ig. In all of them Horowitz triumphantly demonstrates that whatever it is that keeps him from the concert stage, it is surely not failing artistic power. The glittering, steely technique is still there; Horowitz can play the piano with a strength and a seething air of controlled violence...
...Macmillan is a semi-paralyzed, desperately senile ass who bleats bromides in a faltering Edwardian drawl. Moore is a most accomplished musician, and he has composed several most accomplished parodies of lieder by Schubert (this one called "Eine Flabbergast"), songs by Faure and Benjamin Britten and a piano sonata by Beethoven...