Word: stabat
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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VERDI: FOUR SACRED PIECES (Angel). Just before he wrote Falstaff at 79, Verdi composed the Ave Maria and Laudi alia Vergine Maria; he finished the Te Deum and Stabat Mater at 83. Together they make a magnificent and devout peroration to the lifework of a man who was a freethinker in his youth. The Te Deum includes a most urgent prayer, and Verdi asked that the music be buried with him. Carlo Maria Giulini leads the Philharmonia Orchestra and Chorus (240 voices) in a stereophonic recording that matches the soaring splendor of the music...
...crazy title credits worthy of Saul Bass, a flower-watering take-off on the silent cinema, and even a cross-eyed Mona Lisa. Approoutset with a Weillanously blasphemous parody of priate background music has been concocted by Robert Prince, who strikes the right note at the Rossini's Stabat Mater (which is, indeed, blasphemous even in the original), and later summons up remembrances or Mendelssohn's Spring Song and the concluding fanfare of Paramount newsreels...
...have sung in it has swerved little from the standard of taste and precision established 50 years ago. Tone quality and balance vary from year to year, but the singing groups are always `neat" and last night the Choral Society demonstrated this quality again, while ranging from Pergolesi's Stabat Mater to Kodaly's folk songs...
Monotony will easily creep into any setting of the Stabat Mater, since this long, grieving text for Good Friday offers little opportunity for the composer to vary tempo and feeling. Pergolesi made the job even harder for himself by writing his piece for soprano, alto and small chamber orchestra, very limited resources indeed, and his attempts to introduce contrasts succeed only partially. Because the chorus shared the 13 sections with the soloists in this performance, their refreshing fullness of tone overcame the monotony of the original score with a tasteful and perceptive arrangement...
...Stabat Mater's simplicity became a great virtue because of this change. While its melodies and accompaniment flow with ease and winning sweetness, its mourning draws back from florid tone-painting to achieve a simpler expression of grief. The introduction of the chorus was, indeed, not an intrusion, for Emily C. Romney, Assistant Conductor of the Choral Society, directed the group with simplicity and made the delightful melodies really sing...