Word: toning
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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...debut, with Caruso, in 1912, critics raved about the "enormous heights" her voice soared to. Last week her altitudes were a little cloudy, but when she settled on the lower musical plateaus, concertgoers could still recognize some of the golden tone that earned Frieda Hempel a million and a quarter dollars in opera, concerts and Red Seal records...
...this is not to deny the important place held by the Boston Symphony in American music. It has a finer tone and greater consistency than any other major ensemble. I do wish, however, to blast the cult of unintelligent Koussevitzky-worship which has become a blight upon the city. The week after week performances of almost any important orchestra are more satisfactory to this viewer and to many others...
Last week, with a grin, William Primrose pulled the rug out from under these connoisseurs of tone. During most of his concert appearances in the past nine months, his valuable Antonio Amati viola (circa 1630) had stayed in its plush-lined case. The viola his audience heard was American (circa 1945). He had played it for more than 40 concerts to prove a point: "There's more snobbery connected with old instruments than with anything I know...
...Moennigs have fashioned string instruments. He brought back to Philadelphia enough seasoned Carpathian spruce and Tirolese maple to make 300 fiddles-which, at the rate of four new violins a year, will take a long time. He is convinced-that the wood is what counts. Harvard once made electrical tone tests of imitation Strads and Amatis that Moennig had built for the Curtis Quartet-and reported them slightly better than the originals...
...Stradivari costs in the neighborhood of $40,000. Bill Moennig, who charges from $750 to $1,000 for his, is slightly cynical about it. Says he: "Invariably the tone of an instrument is rapturously admired until the audience learns it was finished a week or a month before. Then they come out with the bright statement that they'd noticed a bit of newness in the tone...