Word: virtuoso
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...Petersen. Nixon picked him to run the investigation into the cover-up in April 1973 when Richard Kleindienst removed himself from the case because of his close ties to John Mitchell. Petersen's gravel-voiced testimony before the Ervin committee last summer was considered by many to be a virtuoso display of candor and integrity. The transcripts, however, reveal that Petersen was callously manipulated by the President, who even went so far as to boast to Ehrlichman and Ziegler, "I've got Petersen on a short leash...
...like your job?" is the basic question that Studs Terkel asks in his much ballyhooed collection of conversations with 135 Americans. The not very surprising answer: "I don't." A virtuoso of the unobtrusive mike, Terkel talked with elevator operators and company presidents, yacht salesmen and bricklayers, firemen and middle-managers, foremen and farmers and hair stylists-with those few who thought they were in control, with those many more who knew they were not. The excellence of the interviews is hard to convey in brief, since it is a stream-of-consciousness flow that gives them their quality...
...Kreutzer demands a virtuoso technical display and got one from Lynn Chang, violin, and Richard Kogan, piano. Chang bravely began the first movement, Adagio sostenuto--Presto, with a violin solo fugue. Kogan joined Chang, and with three decisive chords, the movement was set. The two played distinctively, yet cooperatively, Chang driving and assertive, and Kogan mature and alert. The second movement, Andante con Variazioni, is a musical puzzle of Theme and Variations. The movement is long, the tempo is slower, and the variations get a little tedious, so more concentration is needed on the performers' part to keep projecting...
...Harvard in many years. He has studied piano since age seven with Nadia Reisenberg in New York City and with Nadia Boulanger last summer in France, and his performance of the Liszt E Flat Piano Concerto was exceptional. This is as it should be--one of the greatest virtuoso pianists who ever lived, Liszt was fond of composing fiery technical showpieces. Kogan's fingers glided effortlessly across the keys in the scale passages, his chords were clean and full-toned, and Liszt's famous accelerating octave chromatic scales sent tense waves of excitement through the audience. Kogan's marvelously smooth...
Presiding over the action is Lewis Stadlen, who plays the geriatric Voltaire, the buoyant Pangloss and assorted villains. The set, which might have been a collaboration between Rube Goldberg and the sculptor Jean Tinguely, turns in its own virtuoso performance. It throws down bridges between continents, cascades green streamers down to simulate jungle, and rocks like a storm-battered ship. Despite such assaults, the audience is treated with a kind of 18th century courtesy and just the right note of complicity. If there could be a lovelier Candide than this, it is difficult to imagine...