Word: violin
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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Soprano Curtin began singing seriously only in her junior year in college. As a child back in Clarksburg, W. Va.. she studied violin, majored in political science at Wellesley, during the war got a job as an electrical engineer with the War Production Board ("I didn't know a wall plug from a telephone pole"). Married to a professor of history at the University of Wisconsin (she has since married Editor-Photographer Eugene Cook), she accompanied her husband on archaeological expeditions to Peru and Ecuador. But she kept on taking voice lessons once a week, gave several recitals...
Bach's Sonata No. 3 in E major for violin and klavier opened the program. In the classic manner, the gamba, with its forest of tuning pegs, doubled the continuo of the harpsichord. The trio maintained a nice balance; its members played to each other. But slippery intonation and lack of clarity marred the violin's performance, and the harpsichord indulged in unjustified rubatos and changes of tempi...
...Mozart's trios for violin, cello, and piano, Nos. 3 and 5, constituted the second half of the program. The string players seemed to have warmed up, but at the same time some of the distinctions between pitch levels melted. In addition, the technically able pianist lacked finesse in rounding off phrases...
...this fact was responsible for one of the concert's most definite successes--an interesting novelty in sound and tone--but also for its only trace of weakness. Proficiency on such instruments as the cromorne (a woodwind) or the viele (a string about the size of the violin but held like a cello) is not often in demand, and so it is not surprising that the Cambridge ensemble should impress one more by vivacious spirit of performance than by craftsmanship of execution...
...great leaders," said the present leader, "were also our first great scholars." A contemporary described Thomas Jefferson as a 'gentleman of 32 who could calculate an eclipse, survey an estate, tie an artery, plan an edifice, try a cause, break a horse, dance the minuet and play the violin.' John Quincy Adams, after being summarily dismissed by the Massachusetts legislature from the United States Senate for supporting Thomas Jefferson, then became Boylston Professor of Rhetoric and Oratory at Harvard University, and then became a great Secretary of State. And Senator Daniel Webster could stroll down the corridors...