Word: taut
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...being suggested as therapy for such noncardiovascular diseases as certain types of diabetes (the body's cells make better use of insulin) and asthma. For some people, heavy exercise like weight training seems to slow down the effects of aging, keeping the skin youthful and muscles taut...
DIED. Ross Macdonald, 67, writer of taut, psychologically acute detective novels; of Alzheimer's disease, which he had had for three years; in Santa Barbara, Calif. In such books as The Moving Target, The Gallon Case and The Chill, his sleuth Lew Archer roamed Southern California through false fronts and cracked surfaces to unearth his clients' dark familial sins and secrets that almost always led to murder. Born Kenneth Millar, he adopted his pseudonym after his wife Margaret became a successful mystery novelist. Though his early work echoed Raymond Chandler and Dashiell Hammett, his only peers among modern...
...others to enter. After she takes in the bum, Aston's altruism causes her to suffer painful flashbacks of her past in a mental hospital and to recall her inability to deal with people. Shipley creates a very neurotic and tense Aston who has tremendous difficulty finishing thoughts. Her taut facial expressions constantly match her nervous and fidgety personality. Shipley has many opportunities to reveal her feelings to the audience, most notably in a long monologue when she describes her experiences in the mental hospital with electric shock treatments. She is able to effectively display her character's anger...
...Chicago Symphony. Winner and still champion, Solti's virtuosic ensemble has been the finest in the U.S. for more than a decade, and was often close to the top under earlier music directors like Fritz Reiner (1953-62). The orchestra's strengths are its burnished brass and taut, lean, precise string section, which give its performances a crispness and vitality that are the despair of its rivals. "I have never had a better-spirited orchestra than this one," says Solti, 70. "If they have a conductor they respect, they will go through hell for him." The Chicago spirit...
...composer's message. "My function," he says, "is to be a necessary middleman, not a willful, distorting, idiosyncratic, egocentric middleman." His high performance standards are derived from three major influences: Toscanini, Soprano Maria Callas and Director Wieland Wagner. From the incandescent Toscanini, Levine learned the value of a taut, singing musical line. Callas, the indomitable spirit who assaulted her audiences with intense, molten performances, taught Levine that opera must always be convincing as drama, not simply a collection of voices gift wrapped in period costumes. Wagner, who restored Bayreuth to glory after World War II, showed him that opera...