Word: virtuoso
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...bounds of an idiom whose orchestrational possibilities are very limited. As a result, Beethoven sometimes demands more of the string quartet than can be done with the instruments at hand. His Quartet in A Minor, Op. 132, however, carefully skirts any such fault. Ideally played, it demonstrates true virtuoso quartet playing, combining a great technical difficulty with the exceedingly delicate job of transmitting to the audience a sense of the total structure of the piece...
...Guarneri String Quartet's performance of the work at Sanders Theater, in the fourth concert of its series here, was of virtuoso caliber. The most significant aspect of this performance was that the second movement, un poco adagio, posed no problems of continuity to the listener. Throughout, the Quartet played with freedom and sensitivity, and brought out fully the singing qualities of the music...
BEETHOVEN: DIABELLI VARIATIONS (RCA Victor). Thirty-three variations on a waltz by the Austrian composer Anton Diabelli pose a formidable test for the virtuoso talents of 32-year-old John Browning. Much talked about but seldom performed, they strain the pianist's technical mastery and his emotional ambience. Browning, who is one of the best of the "percussive" school, passes the technical trials splendidly, but in the melancholy later variations, when he should be exploring Beethoven's darker nature, he appears to be marking time before the florid finale...
...institution where verbosity is a virtue, Javits is probably the greatest virtuoso of them all?at least since Hubert Humphrey departed. "He knows the facts on everything," says Marion?and he can summarize them in a few thousand choice words at a moment's notice. Back in 1961, Javits was orating on an immigration bill that he considered unjust when Rhode Island Democrat John Pastore tried to gain the floor. "Let me finish," pleaded Javits. Pastore looked up at the chamber's high ceiling, rolled his eyes dramatically and moaned: "The Senator never finishes...
April being the cruelest month, Actor Hal Holbrook, 41, rummaged through the collected wit of Samuel Clemens and inserted an apt crack into his one-man virtuoso performance, Mark Twain Tonight!, at Manhattan's Longacre Theater. "What's the difference between a taxidermist and a tax collector?" mused Holbrook-Twain. "The taxidermist takes only your skin...