Originally posted by Don Petter
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The private lives of string quartets
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amateur51
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Originally posted by Stanley Stewart View Post#14 Thanks, Dave 2002 I've amended the quotation in #12. Perhaps more Danny Kaye in "The Court Jester" tongue- twisters..."The vessel with the pestle..." than Morecamble & Wise!
One of those memorable scenes - thank you Stanley
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Right on, saly, thanks. Didn't think anyone would remember. Some people will always associate "We'll always have Paris" with Bogey and Bergman in "Casablanca" (1942) but we'll always have Danny Kaye from a few years later in "Up In Arms" to "White Christmas" and "Secret Life of Walter Mitty" in the 50s. Decidedly off-thread but happy memories, too.
In mitigation, perhaps I should add that I've also been reading "My Life And Music" by Artur Schnabel, (pub 1970) which I picked up in a charity shop for £1 a few years ago. Pt 1, Twelve autobiographical talks given by AS in 1945 to an audience of music students at the University of Chicago. Pt 2, Lectures , Reflections on Music, which he gave at Manchester University, all combining his experience, wit and wisdom . Foreword by Sir Robert Mayer and intro by Edward Crankshaw.
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Originally posted by kernelbogey View PostInteresting post, BSP. What did you think of the actress playing the violinist daughter, Alexandra? I spotted in the (enormously long) credits 'dialect coach for Miss Poots'. So I checked her out, and she's British!
BTW, Andrew Watkinson of the Endellion Quartet weighed in on the film, in a Guardian interview with Laura Barnett:
If Yaron Zilberman's film can't make Christopher Walken and co look like real string players, at least it understands the dynamics of a quartet, says violinist Andrew Watkinson
Years earlier, back in 2004, another Guardian article, by David Waterman, also of the Endellion Quartet, took on the philosophical question of the dynamics of a string quartet, with a brief allusion to the the worst recent real-life case of a string quartet in dysfunction, the Audubon Quartet:
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Originally posted by Stanley Stewart View Post#14 Thanks, Dave 2002 I've amended the quotation in #12. Perhaps more Danny Kaye in "The Court Jester" tongue- twisters..."The vessel with the pestle..." than Morecamble & Wise!
we encounter Stravinsky - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Court_Jester - worth reading that one!
See also http://dagsrule.com/pestle.html though copyright considerations have probably blocked the video.
This video probably works, though - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-zHBN45fbo8
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Richard Tarleton
Thanks again to bluestateprommer for the Indivisible by Four tip - I read it last week on holiday, an enchanting and uplifting book. Highly recommended.
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Richard Tarleton
"Married to the Amadeus" by Muriel Nissel, on the other hand, I found a very dull read [pace Stanley, above ]. It appears to be privately published, and badly in need of an editor if only to clear up the exclamation marks. I found myself speed-reading large chunks on her civil service career (she had a distinguished career on her own account), family holidays and doing up their suburban house. A book fit only for the grandchildren.
At times it slips into quite remarkable banality. Norbert Brainin is described as " at the same time very full of himself and of his own ideas, and bombastic, already resembling and often behaving outrageously like Mr Toad". A footnote informs us that "Mr Toad is a character in The Wind in the Willows, a children's book by Kenneth Grahame. He is portrayed as being very full of himself, but he was befriended and well liked by the other animal characters in the book".
Nadia Boulanger, perhaps the greatest musical pedagogue of the twentieth century (of whom Copland said "Nadia Boulanger knew everything there was to know about music; she knew the oldest and the latest music, pre-Bach and post-Stravinsky. All technical know-how was at her fingertips: harmonic transposition, the figured bass, score reading, organ registration, instrumental techniques, structural analyses, the school fugue and the free fugue, the Greek modes and Gregorian chant...") is described as follows [they all meet at Dartington]: "...and the musicologist and teacher, Nadia Boulanger - spinsterish with her long grey hair framing her face, austere as she peered through her glasses, but immensely lively and brimming over with musical knowledge and advice". This would probably have served equally as well as a description of Imogen Holst who was also present.....Last edited by Guest; 07-06-13, 09:29.
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Originally posted by Richard Tarleton View PostInteresting discussion on Music Matters about the new film A Late Quartet:
A fascinating subject, the truth often stranger than any fiction. I didn't realise the Amadeus got separate cars to separate hotels. Rostislav Dubinsky's account of his years as founder member of the Borodins in post-Stalinist Russia is terrifying in places. There's a cryptic reference to the private lives of the Quartetto Italiano in "An Equal Music" which I've not seen mentioned elsewhere.
Is anyone aware of any other published quartet "biographies"?
It's on Sky Box Office right now.
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Ariosto
Originally posted by Sydney Grew View PostThe viola player is as a rule the most musical of the four (take Mozart); the second violin can often be a put-upon personality with a sense of inferiority; the first violin is usually something of a show-off; and the violoncellist ploughs his own furrow.
P S Mozart also played the violin.
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Richard Tarleton
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Originally posted by Richard Tarleton View PostThe film A Late Quartet (see OP) is showing tonight at 11.00 on BBC2.My life, each morning when I dress, is four and twenty hours less. (J Richardson)
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Richard Tarleton
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