Word: violine
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...ELGAR: VIOLIN CONCERTO IN B MINOR (Angel). Sir Edward Elgar himself conducted when Yehudi Menuhin, as a prodigy of 16, first recorded this expansive, romantic showpiece. Recording techniques have come a long way since 1932, and Menuhin, at 50, has greater emotional involvement, as well as a marvelously burnished tone, now flashing, now fading in a wide-ranging display...
Some singers purge themselves with doses of castor oil, others prime themselves with such elixirs as raw eggs, whisky with sugar, iodine in milk, quinine pills, or stiff injections of vitamin C. Also popular are small doses of strychnine, which, according to one doctor, "tunes the vocal cords like violin strings." Says Dr. Geraldo de Marco, house physician at Milan's La Scala Opera: "We give so many shots that occasionally we run out and just give injections of water. The singers never know the difference, and afterward they always say how wonderfully they sang...
Siday, 61, is a graduate of London's Royal Academy of Music, first learned about mood music while playing the violin for silent movies. He moved to the U.S. in 1938, played and wrote the arrangements for Ray Noble's orchestra and Fred Waring and his Pennsylvanians. Later, with his friend, the late Austen Croom-Johnson, co-father of the singing commercial ("Pepsi-Cola hits the spot"), he wrote the signature themes for 26 radio stations. But, claims Siday, that is old stuff now. "You just can't get a good drenching rain sound with an orchestra...
...translate the ideas of the conductor to the musicians. He derives his authority from the simple fact that he can play better than anyone else in the orchestra, sets the standard that the rest of the players are expected to live up to. He plays all the important violin solos in an orchestral piece, and, indeed, ought to be so familiar with the literature that he can substitute at the last minute for an absent violin soloist...
...anybody else who happens to be onstage. During a Cleveland Orchestra concert six months ago, the E string on Soloist Isaac Stern's violin suddenly snapped in the final movement of a Brahms concerto. Concertmaster Druian quickly gave Stern his Stradivarius, passed the disabled instrument to Assistant Concertmaster Daniel Majeske and continued playing on Majeske's violin. Majeske replaced the string and-switch, switch-Stern finished with a flourish on his fiddle, having missed only one measure of music. Says Druian, with the understatement typical of the supercool concertmaster: "It's all part...