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The words seemed to echo from a shadowy past, where justice was twisted into a theater of cruelty, where the gallows were strung with piano wire on meat hooks.

Crumb’s aggressively nontraditional scores — a vitrine of which were displayed outside the Coolidge Auditorium on Saturday — and his unorthodox approach to the instrument rubbed Rorem like steel wool on piano wire.

She also looked as tight as piano wire, struggling to let her natural power flow and missing swing volleys and approach shots by the bunch while laboring to move laterally.

Running a bow, strung with piano wire, through a serrated cutout produces a dark, metallic moan.

They are contests as tight as piano wire, if a good deal less harmonious.