Word: tempi
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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Erwin Bodky's performance displayed an approach of absolute seriousness and purity toward the music. The attraction of instrumental color was avoided by using a bare string orchestra. The tempi were uniformly slow so as to attain the highest awareness of the formal complexity within each of the fourteen fugues performed. Yet at the same time, the playing, especially through its attention to tonal color and phrasing, attained such a level of devotion and warmth that the audience could not help but be moved to a closer contact with the music by the example of the performers...
...symphony certainly showed it to best advantage. Taking special care to clarify the complex yet essentially conventional form, he began crescendi long in advance of their final culminations. Thus a sense of gathering sonority and mass brought the structure more clearly into focus. And by avoiding the extremely show tempi some conductors favor, he made overall textures far less turgid...
...degree elements of exotic Spanish fury. These elements are all the more powerful in Scarlatti because they seem to burst forth from the refined and lyrical Italian style in which he was trained. For me, Mr. Kirkpatrick's playing reached its pack in these works. The deliberateness of his tempi and the tension of his phrasing gave the impression of enormous energy just barely under control, yet the control was always there and by its very presence indicated the extent of that energy...
...work like Dvorak's Fourth Symphony, precision is less important than flexibility and relaxation of tempi. The versatility of Burgin and his musicians made the potentially soggy score interesting from beginning to end. By deflating the rhetorical elements and stressing the more sincerely lyrical sections, Burgin kept the work moving steadily forward. The entire woodwind choir produced beautifully pure tones combined with accuracy and incisive intonation. Jane Rogers played the difficult first trumpet part with power and clarity; the last movement, virtually a concerto for brass instruments with percussion obligatto, gave her and her colleagues ample opportunities to display their...
With its obscure tempi, overlapping phrases, and long, weaving melodies, music of this kind demands a degree of concentration far greater than it usually receives. Next to singing it, there is no better way to become acquainted with the music than to own a fine recording that can be played over and over again in the privacy of one's room. Such a recording is now available...