Longview Daily News from Longview, Washington • 19

The Daily News Longview Washington Friday November 20 1981 Section Pianists give a superhero show With scenes of Gotham City in the background a pianistic dynamic duo performed superhuman feats in front of a packed house at RA Long auditorium Thursday night Pianists Melvin Stecher and Norman Horowitz obviously were not comic book characters Batman and Robin but they performed with the same kind of honesty purity of purpose and aversion to corruption as the caped crusader and his sidekick Like Batman and Robin Stecher and Horowitz emerged as heroes with three standing ovations Unlike the comic book characters their relationship was not one of a mentor and a novice but rather of two highly skilled artists who fit together like a hand in a glove Only the couple of times when an obtrusive door slammed was the performance marred With matching grand pianos and scenes of RA Long's production of West Side Story the two started the program with the Little Organ Fugue in minor by Johann Sebastian Bach (1685-1750) A fugue is a theme that is first stated by one instrument and then is repeated by another before the first is finished The piece then continues with slightly altered versions and repeats or answers to the theme Bach originally wrote the piece for the organ Oc-cassionally his organ or harpsichord works sound blurred when played on a modern grand piano But from the outset Stecher and Horowitz brought out the clarity of the scoring as Bach intended The many hidden voices of the fugue were exposed for all to hear The rest of the program was devoted to composers who wrote works specifically for two pianos and specifically meant to exploit the fingers Variations on a Theme by Beethoven by French composer Camille Saint-Saens (1835-1921) is one of the masterworks of the two-piano literature Saint-Saens himself a gifted pianist was also a composer of proportion and taste Based on the Trio of the minuet movement of Beethoven's Piano Sonata in flat the work sounds more like Beethoven than Saint-Saens Stecher and Horowitz made it almost sound like two giant hands were playing one enormous piano But even in the Beethovenian tumult of the loudest passages the musical strands of the score came through clearly To Italian pianist and composer Muzio Clementi (1752-1832) the terms proportion and taste can also be applied Clementi really knew his piano As a virtuoso he was the only real threat to his contemporary Mozart The two had a piano duel in front of Emperor Joseph II of Austria The winner was undecided Both Stecher and Horowitz were winners in Sonata No 1 in flat major They played the rapid flourishes with poise and taste and handled the delicate dynamic shadings well Another great pianist and even greater composer than Clementi was Sergei Rachmanioff 1873-1943 Please see Pianists Page C2 Symphony opens season Tuesday Friends of Hartmann bad organized an art show of his watercolors and sketches and it was this exhibition that stimulated Mussorgsky to write his suite of piano pieces called Pictures at an Exhibition The piano score was written in 1874 but published until 1886 five years after death For many years it stood as a piano work but as one English critic wrote piece almost asks for In the 1920s Serge Koussevitsky a great conductor who later led the Boston Symphony commissioned French Impressionistic composer Maurice Ravel (1875-1937) to orchestrate the work It is this version that is almost universally heard in concert halls Each of the 10 movements represents one of pictures or sketches held together by the familiar Promenade theme concert will be followed by the Pops Concert Feb 21 The Young Concert will be April 25 Season tickets which are still available at the door and at are $10 for adults and $5 for students and seniors Single tickets are $4 for adults and $2 for students and seniors winning regional and national auditions for the company He has also sung with the San Francisco Opera Reitan began his vocal studies at the University of Puget Sound where he received his Bachelor of Arts degree He went on to advanced voice study at Columbia University where he received a Master of Arts degree Later voice study came in California when he trained under Ivan Rasmussen who has since become head of Stanford voice department Since his return Reitan has been active with the Seattle Opera He lives in Tacoma with wife Beverley and his two sons Hunter and Roald Jr Besides being treated to vocal talent the audience will hear the funny overture to a funny opera Barber of Seville The opera was first produced in Rome in 1816 but overture had been used for two earlier operas Aureliano in Palmira and Elizabeth Queen of England Going from the humorous the orchestra will play the shifting moods of Mussorgsky's Pictures at an Exhibition Mussorgsky wrote the multi-movement suite in memory of his friend Victor Hartmann a painter and architect who died at 39 By Marlon Villa The Daily News While Maestro George Simonsen Jr may need a pair of scissors or a paint brush instead of a baton for the first concert of the Southwest Washington Symphony he will already have a critically acclaimed baritone with him The 8 pm Tuesday concert at RA Long Auditorium will feature noted Tacoma-born baritone Roald Reitan the overture to the opera Barber of Seville by Gioacchino Rossini 1792-1868) and the Pictures at an Exhibition by Modest Mussorgsky (1839-1881) Reitan will sing arias from the operas La Traviata and II Trovatore by Giuseppe Verdi Faust by Charles Gounod and Andrea Chenier by Umberto Giordano voice is big clear and wrote a New York critic Another critic called him superb song craftsman with a sensuous quality that blandishes the Recently Reitan has returned from a three-year engagement with the Deutche Oper (German Opera) in West Berlin and he has performed throughout Europe Before his European stint Reitan sang for five years with the Metropolitan Opera after Fine soundtrack redeems Thief (R) Written and directed by Michael Mann Photographed by Donald Thorin Music by the Tangerine Dream Released by United Artists At the Kelso Theater Rating: Good Thief a jangle-your-nerves thriller rhythmically blends a story of crime with a pulsating Tangerine Dream soundtrack The story has been told a few hundred times before: A high-class thief (James Caan) agrees to work for the Mob only to be double-crossed by them Angry he seeks revenge This routine mad-burglar drama is accompanied by a pointless sideplot in which the crook gets married (to Tuesday Weld) and buys a baby boy (ex-cons adopt) Minus the soundtrack this film would have been eminently forgettable But through some magical editing of sound to film and film to sound editor Dov Hoenig and director Michael Mann have created a first-rate emotional sizzler Like Midnight Express Thief agressively links high-powered electronic music to rhythmically edited images In the opening scene we watch crook Caan crack a safe steal the money and flee Editor Hoenig has matched Caan's emotional rhythm precisely to the beat of the Tangerine Dream instrumental pieces The effect is like having a Moog synthesizer hooked up to your brain waves More than a few critics and movie-goers will undoubtedly resent this emotional Machiavellianism Critic Pauline Kael who chastised the manipulative quality of Midnight Express will undoubtedly condemn Thief tor the same reason Kael contends that films should seduce but should not rape the movie-goer Admittedly Thief does treat us a bit roughly but hardly grounds for criticism Any work of art that can so thoroughly suspend our disbelief that we feel threatened must have done something right Despite the dull domestic scenes Thief succeeds because of the subliminal power of its music-powered action scenes a perfect example of how technical wizardry can be used to enhance rather than to upstage (a la Altered States) the emotional thrust of a film American architecture exhibit featured at LCC gallery photograph of the Nathaniel Russell staircase in Charleston SC built about 1808 The 30-by-20 poster costs $3 The upcoming LCC exhibit was compiled after 130000 miles of travel over an eight-year period by Smith who took more than 8000 photographs and extensive field notes from which this exhibition is drawn The exhibit is made possible with support from the National Endowment for the Arts Gallery hours are Monday through Friday 10 am to 4 pm and Tuesday and Wednesday from 6:30 to 8:30 pm is on display through Dec 15 John Crook of the Longview architectural firm Crook Shaw and Associates who is also a member of the American Institute of Architects will lecture on architecture with an emphasis on local architecture at 8:30 pm on Tuesday in the LCC Fine Arts Gallery There is no admission charge The poster also titled Architectural was chosen from 640 posters in the cultural poster category by editors of the 1979 annual for excellence in design It features a dramatic Black and white photos of outstanding American architecture a lecture by Longview architect John Crook and sales of an awardwinning poster will all be featured during the Tuesday Nov 24 Lower Columbia College Fine Arts Gallery opening of Architectural The 7:30 to 9:30 pm opening will present 234 black and white photographs of outstanding examples of architecture in America from 12th century to the present with accompanying text by the noted architect author and photographer GE Kidder Smith The exhibit.