Word: virtuoso
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...Royal Favor. Franck was born a Belgian. Like Mozart, he was the victim of a pushing father who insisted that the "exceptional boy" bring fame & fortune to the family by becoming a virtuoso pianist. When young Cesar began to teach, Franck pere drew up a table showing the exact time it should take Cesar to get from pupil to pupil, then back home again to his practice. When the young man insisted on composing as well as performing, father Franck brashly had Cesar dedicate his first published music to King Leopold I, hoping for Belgian royal favor. None came...
...room--its door is kept locked at all times except when released by a switch from the circulation desk. If a thief should manage to slip a book out of the reading room, he would still have to get it past Mr. Matthews at the outside door. Matthews, a virtuoso bartender in his spare time, is a doorman in the grandest manner, complete with English accent. Since the Library's opening, he says he has only had to stop one person--a freshman who wandered out absentmindedly with a rare book in his hand...
...organization, and Conductor Munch was a descendant of a distinguished line of "permanent" conductors. Founder Higginson believed that "the essential condition for a great orchestra is stability." Over 68 years, only nine men had shaped and polished the Boston Symphony until it was-except for Arturo Toscanini's virtuoso radio orchestra, the NBC Symphony, which is in a class by itself-the U.S.'s finest and one of the top four in the world...
Muck's successor, Pierre Monteux (now the San Francisco Symphony's conductor) let it sing modern music-Stravinsky, Falla, Honegger, Milhaud. Then, in 1924, began the 25-year reign of Serge Koussevitzky, onetime bass-viol virtuoso and one of the great conductors of his time. Under his stern but benevolent rule, the Boston had come to a peak of polished perfection, and U.S. composers, subsidized and encouraged with commissions, had found a new home...
Almost totally blind, Tatum is generally acknowledged as the most brilliant technical virtuoso of the jazz piano. A musician's musician, he has been praised by such men as Paul Whiteman ("Tatum is a genius") and the late Thomas ("Fats") Waller ("That Tatum ... is just too good"). He delights in swift changes in tempo and key, becomes so involved in complex contrapuntal rhythms that his listeners are certain he will never find his way out. But he always does...