Word: conductor
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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NIELSEN: SYMPHONY NO. 5; MASQUERADE (CBS). Somebody has to make a case for Carl Nielsen, and Conductor Esa-Pekka Salonen certainly does, in both the strikingly original symphony and the dazzling excerpts from the opera...
They booed Harry Kupfer in Bayreuth last week. To be sure, they also booed Set Designer Hans Schavernoch and Conductor Daniel Barenboim. But the real invective -- a great, throaty vassals' chorus of opprobrium -- was reserved for Kupfer, the tousle-headed East German director who had committed the unpardonable sin: staging a brilliantly theatrical production of Wagner's Der Ring des Nibelungen that had little to do with musty tradition and everything to do with revivifying...
Leading his first Ring, Conductor Barenboim leaves a mixed impression. His predilection for slow tempos is very much in evidence, yet occasionally he bolts precipitately, as in the final scene of Siegfried, when it is all that Polaski and Jerusalem can do to keep up. There is some piquant orchestral detail at times, but at others the texture is crude. Barenboim's challenge is to find a convincing, unified point of view...
...also does not hurt that the diminutive ( 5 ft. 2 in.) Lipsig can handle jurors' emotions with the finesse of a symphony conductor. The faces in the jury box registered grief and shock during Lipsig's opening statement in Chernow's suit as the maestro described the doctor's tragic demise: picked up by a front fender, smashed into a "shatterproof" windshield, to "land with a thud on the roadway" with "52 bone fractures." After just one day of trial, the city threw in the towel and settled for an undisclosed amount. "Trying a case against him was like playing...
...garbled voice crackled incoherently over the public address system. The words sounded like "Feng-tu Ta-ti." How strange, I mused, that the conductor would invoke the legendary rebel turned emperor of the Ch'in dynasty through whom the Kings of Hell reported their doings to heaven. Just to be sure, I asked a fellow straphanger what our Charon of the Underworld had said. "Forty-second next," he answered...