Musings on ballet, classical music, the violin, and life
Concerts, recordings, reviews, musings, you name it. I’m a lifelong classical music fan.
Valentine’s Day is a funny sort of holiday. Some argue it’s simply a Hallmark fabrication, to get people to buy cards, spend unnecessary money. Others like to recall its curious, barbaric origins in the ancient celebration of Lupercalia. Me, I’m a fan of tertiary holidays, like St. Patrick’s Day and Valentine’s Day, that allow me … Read more
Many of us have been in a church or concert hall where an organ is being played, all those chords and majestic sonorities cleverly manipulated to create a sublime listening experience. Sometimes, if you’re lucky, while you’re visiting a grand cathedral, the organist might be practicing for a concert and you’re treated to a performance … Read more
The closing scene of the ballet, Swan Lake, carries a real-life poignancy that can be hard to capture in 19th-century story ballets. In the ghostly light of a full moon against a lake, lovers Siegfried and Odette clash with evil sorcerer Von Rothbart in a fight to the death, as Tchaikovsky’s dramatic music builds to … Read more
So you’re acquainted with Antonin Dvořák’s buoyant, instantly accessible “New World Symphony,” are you? And you loved it? Yay, you are part of an enormous fan club that has a spectacularly broad base of listeners. So, what other compositions of Dvořák’s do you like? {{Silence}} Ah. I get it. I was there too, once. But … Read more
I was driving when I heard Erich Wolfgang Korngold’s Violin Concerto the first time. It was a library CD I’d just borrowed, back in the days when most cars had a CD or cassette player and you could borrow handfuls of new music from the library. I was trundling down our hill in the Santa … Read more