The Violin

I’m an adult beginning on the violin and it’s been a rollicking adventure, chronicled here.

More adventures with priceless violins

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Violinist Elina Vähälä made international headlines back in April following a performance of Bruch’s Violin Concerto No. 1 with Finland’s Sinfonia Lahti. The headlines, however, weren’t because of what she was playing and how beautifully she was playing it. Actually, I take that back. Because what she was playing on was a 1780 Giovanni Battista … Read more

Cinematic Bliss: the Korngold Violin Concerto

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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

Waking to Ralph Vaughan Williams’s “The Lark Ascending”

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Ralph Vaughan Williams’s “The Lark Ascending” falls into that delicious category for me, of classical pieces I discover upon awakening. On weekdays I set my iPad alarm to an HD classical station and at 4:06am the music pierces my dreams, awakening me in the kindest of ways (until the “real” alarm blasts me out of … Read more

Schubert’s seductive “Death and the Maiden”

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I don’t consider myself to be someone easily seduced, much less by Death, but Schubert’s “Death and the Maiden” sears a haunting image on my psyche that has few equals in music. (One of them being, ironically, another Schubert piece, his Impromptu No. 3 that I blogged about HERE. And, okay, Debussy’s “Afternoon of a … Read more