Musings on ballet, classical music, the violin, and life
Concerts, recordings, reviews, musings, you name it. I’m a lifelong classical music fan.
It was love at first sight—or hearing—for me with Josef Suk’s Scherzo fantastique, a lively 15-minute composition that bears a stylistic resemblance to my other faves, Khachaturian’s Masquerade waltz and Saint Saëns’ Danse Macabre, not to mention elements from Dukas’ The Sorcerer’s Apprentice, which I blogged about HERE. But only when I started delving deeper … Read more
I hate deaths. At the risk of stating the obvious, they hurt. They leave a giant gap. You walk around with an ache that can’t be assuaged. Those are precisely the reasons I love “celebration of life” events for the recently deceased. Sure, you’re still going to grieve. Cry. Feel that emptiness. But the word … Read more
The only reason I chanced upon Clara Schumann’s compositions was a recent YouTube playlist suggestion, which sent my thoughts in two directions. First, I thought, “Shouldn’t I have heard her music live in my twenty-plus years as a San Francisco Symphony subscriber? What’s up with that? Why do her works continue to be unappreciated and … Read more
You might notice more white space on this blog. Less words. That’s on purpose. Space feels great. It’s a hard commodity to come by as we approach the holidays and the end of the year. Everything gets squeezed in, condensed. More food than usual. More family time than usual (leading, admittedly, to … Read more
I was thrown back in time recently, through music, while attending the San Francisco Symphony. The piece in question was a perennial crowd-pleasing warhorse, Tchaikovsky’s Symphony No. 5. Now, if you’re thinking, “been there, done that,” yeah, so was I. I’d chosen the concert not for the Tchaikovsky but for the opening work, Grieg’s Piano … Read more