Word: wagnerism
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...them to composers, setting both grandmasters and musicians in parallel hierarchies. Capablanca--"pure, classic, elegant... yet capable of demonic force in his great moments... the complete technician" is the Mozart of chess, and Alekhine, "a nervous tiger who stalked his prey with involuntary physical twitchings and psychic lust" is Wagner. Fischer, Schonberg asserts, surpasses even Wagner in terms of "monomania...
...MARLENE WAGNER...
...that after spending the early fall in New York, Kubelik decamped for Munich to fulfill previously scheduled conducting commitments and kept in touch with New York largely via phone and Telex exchanges. In his absence, things began to come apart, beginning in January with a spectacularly unlucky production of Wagner's Tristan und Isolde. Swedish Soprano Catarina Ligendza, scheduled for the first performances, canceled, citing illness. In turn, Tenor Jon Vickers, who is the best Tristan in the world right now, began to have second thoughts about making his Met debut in the role. Conductor Erich Leinsdorf apparently caught...
...movement (entitled "Defend the Yellow River") should conjure up an image of Chairman Mao's call to arms. A piano solo in the second movement "summarizes the long history of the nation and its people," but if the program didn't say so no one would ever know. Nietzsche, Wagner, George Bernard Shaw and many other critics have all written tracts trying to analyze some piece or another in historical or philosophical terms. All they have shown is that you can interpret the "meaning" of a piece of music almost any way you please...
...Whether Wagner is tolerable with anything less than great singing is an arguable proposition, but one thing is certain. The Met's Tristan almost closed for lack of any voices at all. First, Sweden's Catarina Ligendza canceled out as Isolde pleading illness. Nilsson was busy elsewhere. Then Tenor Jon Vickers, who seems to tremble before Wagner but may just possibly be the Tristan everyone at the Met (including Nilsson) has been waiting for, begged out of his first two performances-he wanted more time. Not to be outdone, Conductor Erich Leinsdorf threatened to resign, complaining that...