Word: tempests
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Beethoven: Piano Sonatas, Op. 31, Nos. 1, 2 ("Tempest") and 3 (Glenn Gould; Columbia; $5.98). Hindemith: Piano Sonatas Nos. 1, 2 and 3 (Glenn Gould; Columbia; $5.98). It is now a decade since the happy hypochondriac of music abandoned the recital stage to devote his life to producing radio documentaries in his native Canada, staying warm (he still wears sweaters and mufflers on the balmiest days) and, fortunately for the rest of the world, continuing to make some of the finest, most original and pleasantly outrageous recordings...
Newport is an island. Theophilus North is Wilder's Tempest, a mock world, a playful world, made safe and orderly by kindly meddling. It would take a Caliban or a young curmudgeon to complain that it is a tempest in a teapot...
...situation is quite different with the Tempest and Merchant of Venice incidental music and the In Memoriam overture. In Memoriam is a masterpiece and a monument to the best aspects of Victorian music. Written the same year as the Symphony and dedicated to his recently-deceased father, it builds from a quiet start through a restless central section for strings. The climax at the end is spectacular: the large orchestra (augmented by two extra horns and ophicleide) is joined by the organ. To see the Royal Albert Hall in London and the organ there is to know where In Memoriam...
...like way, the incidental music excerpts from The Tempest and The Merchant of Venice provide a form commensurate with Sullivan's gifts. All the devices that came to be standard in the Savoy orchestrations are here: the long solo horn calls as bridges the violins doubling waltz themes in octaves and the woodwind chordal sections, to name a very few. From the first bassoon solo in The Merchant, the sound is lively and attractive. Sometimes the geography can be confusing (a Viennese waltz set in Venice is hard to fathom), but the spirit is blithe. Sullivan was clearly best...
...Records did a grave disservice by releasing only instrumental sections of The Tempest. Cutting the vocal sections was an obvious budgeting move that was grossly inartistic. The songs were essential to the work. They are embarrassingly similar to operetta and their beauty is just as impressive...