The oboe is one of the most obdurately difficult of the wind family to master. At 30, the Swiss player Heinz Holliger, who played in Bulawayo last night accompanied by Edith Picht-Axenfeld, is without doubt already a virtuoso of the first rank.
Student recital pleases
Diploma students from the Rhodesian Academy of Music provided an entertaining lunch-hour recital at Bulawayo City Hall yesterday.
Koeckert Quartet Delights
What sort of criteria does one apply when evaluating the merits of one string quartet as against another? So many things are relevant – the members’ individual capacities as musicians, their unanimity of attack, quality of tone, temperamental compatibility, unity of concept about the shaping of a phrase, the unfolding of a movement, consistency, presence and other things, too.
St. Mark Passion in City
The St. John’s Singers, conducted by Hugh Fen with Leslie Owens (organ) performed Charles Wood’s setting of the St. Mark Passion at St. John’s Cathedral last evening.
Coppens gives erudite reading of Mozart
The genius of Mozart is so multi-faceted that arguments can be made for wide diversities of interpretation.
Quote was Plea for Tolerance
The Bulawayo Chronicle
Sir,
I declined the line-by-line debate with H.G. Sendall on the function of art in society because it would take considerable space adequately to traverse all the issues involved, and I am far from certain that the argument would be of general interest to your readers.
Art show deserves support
I remember the late Walter Murch, one of America’s foremost realist painters of this century, saying to a student during a life drawing class: “Don’t ever be concerned with literal accuracy – your responsibility is not to the subject, it’s to the painting or drawing you are making”.
Modesty, Finesse from Violinist at City Hall
There was a refreshing modesty about the Italian violinst Salvatore Accardo and his accompanist Niccolo Parente who played in the Bulawayo City Hall last night – not merely personal reticence, but an avoidance of self-regarding virtuosity and of the precariousness with which many performers draw attention to their sensitivity.
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Impressive Beethoven piano recital
A strong case could be made for the proposition that the anger of one man changed the whole course of Western music. Beethoven’s letters abound with distress at his deafness, his social ineptitude and at the shallowness of a society which fawned on the nobility but patronized and exploited genius.
Pianistic magic revealed
No composer is more difficult for a pianist than Mozart. It is not that there are so many notes, but the executants requires the humanity to seek out the music’s raw- edged tragic core, yet enough composure to avoid unsettling its courtly elegance.