Word: sostenuto
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...Boston Symphony Orchestra’s rendition was of the highest quality. Metzmacher brings the orchestra through the anger and fear of the underworld to a violent earthly death with expert ease and precision. The piece begins appropriately with a Lento Sostenuto as Orpheus weeps by the coffin of Eurydice; the orchestra then speeds up as Orpheus picks up his lyre and begins to dance. The dissonance of the underground becomes agitated as the Furies try to destroy Orpheus, but they are stilled as the orchestra produces the sonorous sounds of his lyre. In the finale, Orpheus dies amidst...
...Kreutzer demands a virtuoso technical display and got one from Lynn Chang, violin, and Richard Kogan, piano. Chang bravely began the first movement, Adagio sostenuto--Presto, with a violin solo fugue. Kogan joined Chang, and with three decisive chords, the movement was set. The two played distinctively, yet cooperatively, Chang driving and assertive, and Kogan mature and alert. The second movement, Andante con Variazioni, is a musical puzzle of Theme and Variations. The movement is long, the tempo is slower, and the variations get a little tedious, so more concentration is needed on the performers' part to keep projecting...
Stravinsky's music is characterized by clarity, precision, ruthless concision, wild energy, and gaiety-Eliot's magical condition of complete simplicity. His musical sentences are always composed of complete units, which is why he manipulates prosody by syllable rather than word. He abhors sostenuto music, prefers staccato, the breaks of breath, which render every particle of every line crystalline. He does not admit superfluous notes, dynamic nourishes, believing that "gratuitous excess spoils every substance, every form that it touches." He is most traditional, and most original, in his use of severely-delineated polyphony, rhythm, text, and articulation. Stravinsky has always...
...Bartok Suite Op. 14 also did not lack spirit and whimsy. When violence was in order, as in the 'Scherzo,' Hellman supplied it. In the concluding 'Sostenuto,' he gleefully intercalated a grotesque, ponderous obbligato, while reviving the lyricism which so finely sculptured the Sarabande in the Bach...
...famous "Laugh, Falstaff" at the beginning of Act II is marked allegro sostenuto, but it is always sung exactly the reverse, staccato...