Word: webern
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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Despite its eminence, one complaint might be made against the Vienna Philharmonic: it plays too little modern music, rarely even gets around to the works of such eminent Viennese as Arnold Schoenberg and Anton Webern. But the men of the Vienna Philharmonic know what they like. Says Concertmaster Willy Boskovsky: "Our dominion, with our sound, is Beethoven, Brahms, Bruckner and the classics; at this we are good. Perhaps American orchestras can play some of the newer music better...
...Crawford sang a half dozen Hungarian folk-songs in the richly colored arrangements made by Bartok in 1929. Most of these were melancholy in subject and in treatment; and she captured their moods admirably. She did a group of five Webern songs, dating from 1909-1917. Webern had not yet evolved the highly atomized style that has, for good or (probably) bad, made him the No.1 idol of the young fry among today's composers. With the exception of the moving "Kahl reckt der Baum" (to words of Stephan George), these songs did not seem worth writing down...
Monday, August 10: 8:30 p.m., concert, "Songs and Piano Music of the Twentieth Century," Dorothy and John Crawford, Bruce Archibald, featuring works by Debussy, Bartok, Stravinsky, Schoenberg, Webern, in Sanders Theatre...
August 10: Dorothy Crawford, soprano; John Crawford and Bruce Archibald, pianists. Music by Bartok, Schoenberg, Webern, Debussy, and Stravinsky...
Balanchine's plotless episodes were set to later, drier Webern-music that chattered, squeaked, moaned and repeatedly died away in cacophonous little cries. Dance matched music with some wonderfully inventive and often funny sequences of movement. In one pas de deux (set to Five Pieces, Opus 10), Balanchine has a man and a woman approach each other time and again in an elaborate effort to embrace, only to have a final miscalculation leaving them clutching at air. Vastly different in their approaches, both Balanchine and Graham were remarkably successful at illuminating Webern's sparse, mostly atonal scores-perhaps...