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Date: | Mon, 19 Nov 2001 15:08:28 EST |
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Last Saturday I attended a rehearsal during which Andre Previn muscled
the Munich Philharmonic through Dmitri Mitropouls's orchestra version
of Beethoven's string quartet No. 14 in c sharp minor. I had never
experienced this piece before and was surprised how little it sounded
like Beethoven. It left me wondering whether the sound was Mitropoulos.
I think the trouble was that the color a string orchestra simply can't
accomodate the demand for a very sharply chiselled sound in the piece's
address-and-response passages--something that in the true quartet version
two instruments ahve much less trouhble in doing.
Anyway, the fault was surely not with Previn who revealed himslef as
a no-nonsense conductor of the old (German) school, very demanding in
rehearsal and implacabale in determination. Moreover, he expressed his
orders clearly in native-sounding (north-) German. From the piano stool
he also conducted Mozart's piano concerto KV 491. Excellent Zusammenspile
with the orchestra, despite a rather mechanical performance on the piano.
Denis Fodor
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