Word: thomson
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...benefit of his Herald Tribune readers, Virgil Thomson once described the Philadelphia Orchestra's tone as "smooth as a seashell, iridescent as fine rain, bright as the taste of a peach." These Thomson similes make a succinct description of his own writing. "Music Right and Left" is the third collection of his reviews, covering from 1947 through half of 1950, and ranging in content from Bach to Pravda. Each review is a slick, colorful, brightly polished little essay; the polish is all the more remarkable since each review was written in about an hour...
Music reviewing takes more than a technical knowledge of music. It requires translating a detailed, subjective impression into comprehensible terms. Thomson is a good critic and a sound musician. More important, he expresses himself pungently and clearly. He is particularly adept at the critics' most difficult task--describing sound. Only occasionally does he lapse into Downesian superlatives or vague adjectives like "good" and "adequate." His criticism of performance is objective and incisive; his evaluation and exposition of form is wonderfully clear. Thomson's brightness and wit ("Wagner's musical dramas are conceived for a theater of whales") make him very...
Unlike its predecessors, "Music Right and Left" leaves the "name" conductors and orchestras pretty much alone: it exhibits more of Thomson the Crusader. One series exhorts various cities to support their respective orchestras, another hurls some stinging invective at movie music (he excepts Aaron Copland's "Red Pony" music), and a third series collects his caustic remarks about the Soviet ban on "bourgeois" music...
...Herald -Tribune's Virgil Thomson judged it "unquestionably an authentic work of art " Altogether, the Second is much easier going than the sometimes bewildering third. It opens with a serene song in the strings, reminiscent of the green beauty of the Connecticut countryside. In the slow third movement come the "Bach tunes" in full brass, while the strings are skittering at something else. Actually, the chorales are typically Ivesian abstractions; if Ives, a kind of John Marin of music, quotes from anything, it is that old 19th Century standard, the Long Green Organ Book. If there...
came Peggy Thomson, Alison Begbie...