Tuesday, October 4, 2005

I love how Dvorak can be both playful & intense to an extreme. In the last movement of the sonata in F, there are two fan-like runs in the piano 36 seconds to the end. It's quiet, so it happens in a penumbra, but surrounded by the aura of pedal. It opens like a quick breath, like the lifting whirl of the hem of a skirt, & then it's over. A few seconds later the figure is repeated in the violin. I usually like Dvorak's violins, so vigorous & pressing & present, all muscles & tendons, but in comparison with the brief loveliness, the vanishing sublimity of the piano — well it can't compare.

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