Word: doktor
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Sadly, this summer's brass fanfare may be the last. Scholtes has his enemies, who feel that he has won more glory than is proper for a $220-a-month clerk. When he was invited to Salzburg last year and introduced as "beloved Herr Doktor Scholtes," his fellow townsmen seethed. But if his concours goes, the loss will be Kerkrade's: instead of listening to the pick of the world's brasses, the town will have to settle for relative quiet and its own supply of twelve brass bands, 18 male choirs, nine flute, mandolin and drum...
...Sonata Per Arpeggione (1824), actually transcribes for viola a work for an extinct instrument. A Viennese violin maker invented the six-stringed arpeggione in 1823 and for some reason Schubert wrote a masterpiece for it. Transcribed, the sonata is one of the mainstays of the viola repertoire. And Doktor, though he chose a questionable tempo to begin with, modulated it with good, sensitive rubatos where needed. Perhaps because he was just not warmed up, some of the technical display in the later movements came out more forced than forceful. Still the Schubert was the most impressive piece on the program...
...concluding Sonata No. II in E flat major (Op. 120, No. II) by Brahms got the finest performance of the evening, and nearly deserved it. Though Doktor occasionally had problems with undesirable harmonics, in the lower register he coaxed forth the best rich tone of the viola. Under his consistently thoughtful phrasing, the music breathed; it ranged vigorously over a continuum of delicacy and strength. Beneath it all, the piano dully bungled along: too much pedal again, sloppy arpeggios, no subtlety in dynamics. But Brahms surmounted Miss Menuhin's limitations...
...Though Doktor deserved his three encores, the Diabelli, Beethoven, and Tartini crept along the same low road as most of the rest of the program. It was a bad night for Beethoven fans: his contredanses (numbers 1 and 5) were pleasant, but banal...
...repertoire of viola music is in a sad state; witness the fact that the two best pieces on the program were transcriptions (Brahms originally wrote his sonata for clarinet). Doktor demonstrated, nicely the unique tonal powers of the viola: all that lack now are more good opportunities to exploit them...