Word: tonally
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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Millet sought an enduring and stoic language based on large shapes, resolute drawing, deep tonal contrasts. The result was a classical gravity, "a Homeric idyll, in patois," as one admirer put it. From such an angle, the decorative side of impressionism would have seemed pointless, and perhaps it is only as the taste for pretties like Renoir recedes that Millet's achievement becomes once more apparent...
...romanticist, Solti works easily within the huge design of the Eroica. He treats the long first movement almost as an extended phrase. If he lacks something of the rhythmic intensity of Toscanini, Solti nevertheless fuses the conflicting elements of the symphony into a coherent whole with no sacrifice of tonal beauty. The sad serenity of the adagio of the Ninth Symphony surges to the famed choral movement with stunning emotional impact. Partisans will want to stick with some of the classic interpretations: Toscanini's Seventh, for instance, or the Erich Kleiber/Amsterdam Concertgebouw Fifth. But for consistent clarity, warmth...
...what is the most important achievement of this book, Rosen reveals the manner in which non-tonal music can supply both tension and the release of tension that many have criticized Schoenberg for destroying. "The saturation of musical space is Schoenberg's substitute for the tonic chord of the traditional musical language. The absolute consonance is a state of chromatic plenitude." As Rosen points out, Ewartung, one of Schoenberg's early works, ends with all the instruments of the orchestra playing accelerating chromatic scales up and down until a "state of chromatic plenitude" has been created. This state, according...
...works with their usual conviction and energy. Leon Kirchner, whose talents as a coach were in evidence throughout the concert, showed himself to be a formidable triple threat by appearing as the pianist in his own Trio for Piano, Violin and Cello (1954). This piece uses a dissonant, non-tonal vocabulary, articulated in driving rhythms and evocative melodic fragments. The result is an almost Romantic sense of clearly defined broad gestures. Kirchner, along with violinist Donald Weilerstein and cellist Laurence Lesser, responded to these qualities in a lean, rhythmically taut performance that conveyed a sense of urgent, breathless energy...
...discord is not in itself expresssve and only masks the individual efforts of each musician. In 'Improvisation' however, Brown opens alone, unaccompanied and gradually builds on a simple theme until at a peak of intensity, drums and bass enter flying. Brown rides on top, climbing all over the tonal scale in his musical fury. Then as suddenly as they began, Altena and Bennik stop. The dichotomy of solo and ensemble work emphasizes the aura of loneliness which Brown evokes in his solo passages. The piece finally ends with a slow restatement of theme and a despairing musical squiggle by Brown...