Word: violins
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...Symphonie Concertante (1947). This work has not been performed for 30 years, and survived only because it happened to have been transcribed in Labanotation (a system of symbols for preserving choreography). Symphonie Concertante is a reclaimed treasure. Set to Mozart's Sinfonia Concertante in E-flat for violin, viola and orchestra, it casts two ballerinas as the solo instruments, the brilliant Gregory as the violin, the mellower Van Hamel as the viola and surrounds them with a corps tracing patterns and recombining in gentle, eloquent classical phrases. Designer Theoni V. Aldredge has fashioned what must be the most beautiful...
Even one who never tires of a show like Gilbert and Sullivan's musical, HMS Pinafore, recognizes that it often suffers from amateurish performances. Usually such reproductions are filled with stilted stunts and puny actors drowned out by the bass violin, choppy set changes, dull staging. Nonetheless, most Gilbert and Sullivan shows never lose their musical vibrance or lyrical hilarity--all that's needed is singers strong enough to enunciate the clever lines and be heard above the orchestra. But the Harvard Gilbert and Sullivan Players production of HMS Pinafore and the one-act Trial by Jury surpass all expectations...
...island of Ischia, Italy. At 21, Walton scandalized London with his first important work, Fagade, irreverent musical parodies written to accompany poems by his patron Edith Sitwell. He later turned to more conventional forms, such as the oratorio Belshazzar's Feast and his romantic concertos for violin, viola and cello. A slow, painstaking composer who once complained, "A lot of the time music irritates me to madness, especially my own," he nonetheless wrote up to the end; a few days before his death he completed the score for the ballet Varii Capricci, which will premiere in New York City...
Raised in Glen Ellyn, Ill., a Chicago suburb, Anderson first studied the violin but decided to major in art history at Barnard College in New York City. Influenced by minimalists like Sol LeWitt, she tried her hand at sculpture. In the '70s, Manhattan galleries also featured musicians like Minimalist Composer Philip Glass, and Anderson gradually drifted into performance art. In one early conceptualist effort, she stood playing the violin while wearing ice skates implanted in a block of ice; when the ice melted, the piece was over...
...Anderson's targets are largely conventional-the despoiling of the environment, the horrors of war-her methods are not. A voice-activated synthesizer called a Vocoder allows her to speak and sing in chords. Her violin bow has prerecorded tape where the hairs should be, and is drawn across a tape playback head on the instrument's bridge, enabling the violin to "speak." Her back-up band includes saxophones, amplified drums and synthesizer, even a jazz bagpiper. Films and slides are projected onto a giant screen, to reinforce and complement the sense of the words. It could...