Word: tango
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STRAVINSKY: L'HISTOIRE DU SOLDAT and PROKOFIEV: QUINTET, OPUS 39 (Melodiya-Angel). Written at the end of World War I, Histoire is a clever little musical outrage featuring a demented tango, ragtime gone wrong, a satanic mockery of a Bach chorale, and countless other musical japes in the story of a soldier who sells his soul to the Devil, wins it back and finally loses it again. The Prokofiev is also dramatic, originally composed for a ballet about a circus. The Moscow Chamber Ensemble, led by Gennedy Rozhdestvensky, has just the right touch for both: cool, brusque, almost offhandish...
...most recent works is the one that goes bing, bong, boing, Swurpledeewurpledeezeech! That little masterpiece is played as the TV announcer says "CBS presents this program in color," while CBS's trademarked "eye" goes swurpling across the screen. And who can for get Siday's burpy little tango, beedle-deedle-beep-bop, doo-beedle-beep-bop, which is scored to the rhythmic bubbling percolator in the Maxwell House coffee commercial...
From there we go on to all the traditional song-styles of the amateur review -- the sinister tango, the unintelligible patter song, the rock'n'roll parody. The melodies were just not striking enough to break out from their cliches and be heard. Tight, overly simple little tunes, accompanied by only a piano, drums, and a brief, aborted oboe (last year's show had the advantage of a charming flute and steady bass behind the songs), they were too thin to matter much. One song, "What Sort of Man," written by Sharon Stokes, started to move towards a little more...
DANCE CRAZE (Capitol) is a history seminar, with laconic directions on the jacket for twelve dances ranging from the waltz (played by Guy Lombardo) to the black bottom (Pee Wee Hunt), the calypso (Lord Flea), the tango (Nelson Riddle), and the creep (Stan Kenton). Giving instructions for the Charleston was too difficult and the jacket writer gave up, suggesting, Ask your mother...
...militantly anti-Communist Governor Adhemar de Barros had been plotting his own revolt for three months, and was in secret contact with the governors of several other Brazilian states. Carlos Lacerda, governor of pivotal Guanabara state, which consists mostly of the city of Rio de Janeiro, was Tango's declared enemy and would surely go along...