Word: violins
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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...quite sure what had set them off: the flashing performance of a violinist unknown to San Francisco audiences, Russian-born Tossy Spivakovsky, 37, or the wonders of the work he had just played, Béla Bartók's only concerto for violin...
...Francisco Chronicle's Critic Alfred Frankenstein couldn't wait to get to his typewriter. After glowing words for Violinist Spivakovsky,* Frankenstein wrote: "This is conceivably the greatest violin concerto since Brahms . . . noble, rich and splendid . . . blazing display music for [a] soloist to conquer...
...generally lackluster field of serious U.S. composers, Piston rates high. He rates even higher as a teacher. Originally he intended to be a painter, and earned his way through a Boston art school playing the piano, the violin or the saxophone in restaurant bands. Not until he got out of the Navy after World War I, at 26, did he decide to compose instead. The saxophone paid his way" through Harvard's music school, too. Now the head of Harvard's music department, he insists that his students know the rules before they break them...
Szigeti had been letting it "run through my head" for four months, but it was so knotty that he propped the score up before him in San Francisco's opera house. Of one movement, a furious crossfire between piano and violin, Szigeti said: "It is the ugliest thing going. It is terrific." After that came a third movement as lyrical as something out of Puccini, followed by a fast, gay finale...
...field, at least, the Russians were still ace-high with Americans last week. Billboard magazine reported that their classical composers led the U.S. hit parade in 1947. And the most popular of them all was Peter Ilich Tchaikovsky. Victor listed his Nutcracker Suite, Piano Concerto No. 1 and Violin Concerto among its top best-selling classical albums of the year, and Nutcracker was one of Columbia's big sellers...