Word: tonal
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...SHAME. Ingmar Bergman's 29th film is a tonal allegory involving a nameless war, a broken marriage and existential doubt. The performances by such Bergman regulars as Max von Sydow and Gunnar Bjornstrand are letter-perfect, but Liv Ullman, newest member of the Bergman company, portrays the spectrum of feminine response with special brilliance...
...index finger to thumb to produce tiny streams of pizzicato noises. Occasionally a player would press down a trumpet valve without blowing, and let it go just for the click. Or another would blow through a trombone to achieve a breathy effect. There were prolonged single notes and furious tonal scurryings up and down the scale. Yet the Peabody Contemporary Ensemble blended it all into a fascinatingly rich texture of abstract, color-crazy sound in which dense sonic images were rent by small plinks as sharp and gleaming as broken glass...
...concerto grossi, which was hampered by dynamic monotony, struggling second violins, inaudible violas, and a methodical trio of soloists. All of these problems unhappily converged in the second and fifth movements. Miss Lisa Sandow, the first solo violin, and Miss Ruth Rubinow, the solo cello, rivalled each other for tonal monotony and absolute abandonment of nuance. Miss Janet Packer, the second solo violin apparently sensed this lackluster playing and performed with considerable artistic concern. The second concerto, distinguished by a beautiful first movement, fared much better with Tison Street and Daniel Banner as solo violins, and Philip Moss as solo...
SOLOIST James Oliver Buswell played with general indifference to the work's marvelous structural and tonal subleties. He inexcusably tuned sharp and played with a monochromatic tone which, while rather beautiful, was at odds with the coloristic shading of the piece. Instead of varying from lustrous to astringent, from cantabile to martellato, Mr. Buswell overexercised most of the themes with an unvarying weightiness. One notable exception was the elegiac close of the slow movement. Mr. Buswell played with proper aggressiveness in the Magyar uprisings and heroic cadential moments, but has yet to attain a master violinist's inevitable subtlety...
...never so hurried that he loses the grace of an adagio and never so relaxed that he loses the punch of an allegro. He has a gifted sense of measure but, happily, never seems to be measuring. To hear him bring out the bittersweet tonal anguish lurking in the Symphony No. 39 was to realize for once just how much romantic sentiment really filled the classical little heart of Mozart...