Word: scherzo
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...Castelli's new album was recorded in Munich last year on a grant from an award that she received for playing, among other pieces, the Wieniawski Scherzo-Tarantelle that appears on the recording. The entire process took two days: one to record and one to edit the tracks...
...flat minor Scherzo, the piece used by that eerie little Russian girl to intimidate Richard Dreyfus in "The Competition," came off worse. Its main weakness was lack of dynamic range--or rather, lack of sensitive dynamic range, as one tended to be awed by Zimerman's ferocious key depth without forgetting the harsh sounds it sometimes produced. A stricter observance of tempi would also have been in order; this was Chopin, not Debussy. In any case the risks he took at high speeds were admirable, and his confident, blind leaps across three octaves are a reproach to showier pianists...
Ohlsson did well to close the programmed portion of his recital with the B-flat minor Scherzo. This playing was feverish, addictive, note-perfect and luscious at once. An especially fine cantabile reminiscent of a well-played B major nocturne (Op. 9 No. 3) and a successful barrage of blind leaps made for a triumphant exit...
Starting with the downbeat of the first movement of the symphony, though, critique becomes superfluous. Under Cortese's expert, if nervous, direction, the orchestra sailed confidently through the misty opening, the playful hints of the "Ode to Joy" theme to come, the fiery and furious scherzo, the graceful sweeping themes in the violins, the lyrical woodwind solos. The opening movements were filled with as much mystery and grandeur and promise as they ever were...
...performances, even if the 1851 version has sacrificed a little boldness for greater texture. The set also includes a dazzlingly virtuosic performance of Schumann's Konzertstuck for Four Horns and Orchestra (1849) and two "almost" symphonies: the promising, never completed "Zwickau" Symphony, composed in his youth, and the Overture, Scherzo and Finale (1841), with its passages of surprising delicacy and elfin fantasy...