Word: virtuosos
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...violin is Yehudi Menuhin's first concern, but not his only one. The 63-year-old virtuoso is an outspoken opponent of energy waste and pollution: to help eliminate both, he is currently test-riding a battery-powered bicycle. Meanwhile at the 31st Frankfurt Book Fair last week, Menuhin received the booksellers' peace prize of $14,000 as "a man who understands music as a medium for peace." Using the medium as a measure of his appreciation, Menuhin rewarded his audience with the chaconne from Bach's Partita in D Minor...
...continuing to stretch himself in challenging new works. This somber single-movement piece, composed for him in 1976, is less abstract, more late Romantic, than the experiments in shifting sonorities that made Penderecki's name in the 1960s. Over brooding drumbeats and pedal tones, Stern gets a virtuoso workout in involuted runs and dissonant double-and triple-stops. But what stays in the mind is the sustained, eerie high tones that die away like echoes of some remembered grief...
Bach: Six Sonatas for Clavier and Violin (Violinist Henryk Szeryng, Harpsichordist Helmut Walcha, Philips; 2 LPs). Several virtuosos have recorded these crystallizations of the baroque sonata style (Oistrakh, Menuhin, Laredo), but none can beat the suave brilliance of this set. Szeryng plays with an impassioned aristocrat's clarity, grace and brio. Walcha, a virtuoso in his own right, is appropriately brought to the fore by Philips' bright tonal presence...
...urgent, emphatic, agitated music Bowie and Eno provide elevates them and makes them memorable. "Look Back in Anger" shares the dramatic singing and anxious music, tosses in lyrics about the angel of death and Beatles-like backing vocals, and tops it off with Eno's virtuoso performance on several obscure instruments to become the album's best song...
...quartet and toward the richness of the symphony. It stands between both, the way a watercolor stands between an engraving and an oil painting. Or, as Conductor Dennis Russell Davies says, the way baseball stands between tennis and football: "There are just a few players, each one is a virtuoso, and all are involved in every moment of what's going...