Word: virtuoso
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Ladies and Gentlemen (by Charles MacArthur and Ben Hecht, from a play by Ladislaus Bush-Fekete; produced by Gilbert Miller). Decade ago the late Minnie Maddern Fiske huffed, barked, flounced her way through a typical virtuoso's vehicle, Ladies of the Jury. Hungarian Ladislaus Bush-Fekete (né Bus-Fekete: the "h" was his idea of Americanizing the name) made a play with the same situation-a resourceful woman swinging the rest of a jury around from a verdict of guilty to acquittal in a murder case...
Shiny new violins and shabby old violins were tested by Acoustical Physicist Frederick Albert Saunders of Harvard, in collaboration with Virtuoso Jascha Heifetz. Their conclusion (announced last week at a meeting of the Acoustical Society of America in Manhattan): A Stradivarius violin, when played slowly, is not superior in tone to the best modern instruments, but responds more quickly when difficult rapid passages are played-a result probably of aging, not of the makers' skill...
...lacking in individuality and originality. Like the lesser artists of any period who for some reason have not produced the consistently superior quality of work which would raise them to the very top, they have contributed much that is worthy of attention. Vivaldi, for instance, though primarily a violin virtuoso whose love of flash and dexterity often carried him to vacuous extremes, had command of form and gift for thematic invention admired even by Bach who borrowed extensively from his works. The Longy School faculty concert tonight at Agassiz Theatre will present Vivaldi's "Four Seasons"--decidedly worth hearing...
Penmen. Great progenitor of the pen-and-ink school was the virtuoso, Charles Dana Gibson, whose crisp and incredibly thoroughbred characters lived so vividly in the old Life that in 1920 Gibson was able to buy the magazine for $1,000,000. President of the Society of Illustrators from 1904-05 and from 1909-20, Gibson was honored at last week's exhibition by a retrospective room full of Gibson Girls. Now 71 and long retired, high-collared, big-chinned "Dana" Gibson paints all day in a 59th Street studio but not a soul is permitted...
...There were also speeches-off the record. Franklin Roosevelt as usual was the star guest, the virtuoso of ribbery. Ohio's Senator Robert Alphonso Taft was presented (in person) as a Republican foil to the President. Bob Taft proceeded to make on-the-record news by making a sensationally poor speech. When he had finished, New York's Tom Dewey applauded, grinned. He shared his friends' certainty that, if speechmaking has much to do with it, Bob Taft will not be hard for him to beat for the Republican Presidential nomination...