Word: agonizing
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...received its United States premiere Friday as a memorial to the composer, who died a week ago yesterday. This symphony, called "Symphonie Concertante," is one of the more skillful anthologies of Stravinsky's music to appear since World War II. Its first movement presents the principal ideas of Agon, with a dash of Canticum Sacrum; its second, themes from The Rite of Spring; its third, themes from The Symphony of Psalms. After carful editing removes the boring parts where Hartmann tries some of his own tricks, the symphony should be very popular in short courses on twentieth century music literature...
...simple motives and devices which are repeated one at a time and without significant alteration for nearly two hours. It was as if he had drained Orff's Carmina Burana of all its excitement and retained only the simple-mindedness, or took all the musical lines from Stravinsky's Agon, and instead of playing them concurrently, had them played one at a time...
...advance, with the first several solid rows reserved for top officials of the Ministry of Culture. The New York company started with two relatively uncomplicated pieces-Balanchine's Serenade and Jerome Robbins' Interplay. But it remained for the third number on the program- the Balanchine-Stravinsky Agon-to electrify the audience. More sophisticated and far more abstract than Russian ballet fans are accustomed to, it moved even dissenters to applaud at certain high points. The upper galleries, jammed with younger members of the audience, erupted in noise at the curtain. Ballerina Olga Lepeshinskaya, a Bolshoi mainstay, remarked that...
Despite its failings. Noah made a moving TV debut. It added up to one more success for the team that created such ballets as Petrouchka, Firebird, Orpheus and Agon. Says Prima Ballerina Melissa Hayden, who watched with admiration: "I do not know what Balanchine and Stravinsky will do next, what new medium they will conquer, and what new experiences they will give; I am only sure that when they do. I want to be there and be a part...
Convinced that serialism "is the way of the future," Stravinsky played upon it with exalted dignity in his religious work Threni, and with blazing excitement in his ballet score, Agon. But some critics feared that in such works as Movements for Piano and Orchestra, as Stravinsky worked toward the refinement of sound, he was substituting mere mechanical skill for invention and vitality. One of last week's new works - Eight Instrumental Miniatures - seemed to confirm that impression. Consisting of "recomposed" material from 1921. his Miniatures were charming, light, mellow and infinitely adroit, but they did little more than sound...