Word: haydn
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...Vermeer Quartet presented a highly commendable concert July 24--well-rehearsed, carefully controlled, and enjoyable. The three works on the program (Haydn op. 76, no. 1; Beethoven op. 74; and Berg op. 3) are masterful pieces in interestingly contrasting styles. In matters of performance technique and ensemble, there is little to criticize and much to praise: intonation was generally very good, especially in unison passages; the four voices were usually well balanced and blended, without sacrificing an essential degree of individuality; tempi were sometimes a bit on the slow side, but never dangerously so; the softer dynamic markings were occasionally...
...warmer in tone, gave a gourmet's response: "I cannot pour chocolate sauce over asparagus." The metaphor, though exaggerated, describes to some degree what happened in the first half of Monday's concert--thick, sensuous topping (quite enjoyable in the proper context) amorphously coating the crisp organic forms of Haydn and Beethoven. I hasten, however, to make it perfectly clear that the group's well-intended savoring of each morsel never reached the point of outright bad taste...
...just for example, in the exposition of the first movement, right before the closing section. Haydn makes the bold gesture of virtually sitting on long, accented, harmonically ambiguous seventh chords for six bars, a device which clearly speaks for itself. At this moment, only the basic pulse of the allegro and the tension inherent in these chords keep the piece going; but as though afraid somebody would miss the point, the players retarded the tempo melodramatically, making the subsequent return to the more characteristic rhythmic motion of the piece seem awkward. In the second movement Haydn alternates sections of simple...
...other living winners included: in biography (a category formerly combined with history), Joseph Lash's splendidly affectionate Eleanor and Franklin (Norton); in arts and letters, Pianist Charles Rosen's demanding study of The Classical Style in the music of Haydn, Mozart and Beethoven (Viking); in science, George L. Small's ecological lament for the disappearance of The Blue Whale (Columbia University); in philosophy and religion, Martin E. Marty's Righteous Empire: The Protestant Experience in America (Dial); and for translation, Austryn Wain-house's heroic failure to quite transform French Nobel Prizewinner Jacques Monod...
Dunster House Music Society, works by Haydn and Bach. 5:30, Feb. 25. Free...