Mostly introductory articles to series or Tuesday posts as prefaces to Thursday works.
performed by no one, at least not anymore (cover image by Ira Selendripity) This piece almost doesn’t exist. In preparing this stretch of pieces for the Editor’s Choice series, I knew it would be difficult to find a recording of Simpson’s violin … Continue reading Simpson Violin Concerto
featuring Taiwan’s National Symphony Orchestra under Shao-Chia Lü; Carlus Padrissa, stage director, La Fura dels Baus, a co-production of Palau de les Arts Reina Sofia and Maggio Musicale Fiorentino, and many many more people, some listed below. I got too … Continue reading NSO’s Siegfried
(cover image by Celia Spenard-Ko) It’s July again, and you know what that means. Actually, you probably don’t. Just another series, not really any different from all the other stuff I do, except that I pick themes along a different line. … Continue reading Petite Piano Pieces
(cover image by Rawpixel) I’m sure both of my readers are tired of hearing me pontificate and reminisce about the blog every time we hit a milestone, like 900 posts, or 600 pieces of music, or a million words, all … Continue reading 1000
(cover image by Rob Potvin) In the past few years, I’ve done a number of this type of series, and it seems they spiral out of control as I find more and more outstanding music. In 2016, we saw the … Continue reading The French Symphony
Maybe. The cover for this article (by Dan Gold) may seem not at all related to the subject at hand, but at the moment this article was posted (give or take) I am (or will have been? was just recently?) … Continue reading Spotify for Classical Music?
(cover image by Freddie Marriage) Unfortunately, no one can know all there is about everything. I’m at least a little ashamed to admit the degree of my unfamiliarity with, say, most of the symphonies and string quartets of Haydn, or Mozart (but … Continue reading Editor’s Choice: A New Series
See? It’s not all about Sibelius. (cover image by Luca Bravo) You can find the entire series (in reverse chronological order) here. I’m guessing that for any of you readers who wouldn’t consider yourselves to be diligent students of classical … Continue reading The Finnish Symphony in Review
(cover image by Aldric Rivat) Move over, Hovhaness (67ish), Haydn (100+), Bourgeois (114), Dittersdorf (120ish), and even Rowan Taylor (265). You thought Shostakovich’s 15 symphonies, Niels Viggo Bentzon’s 24, Myaskovsky’s 27, Mozart’s 40+, or others held some record for most … Continue reading Quirky Quantity or Questionable Quality?
(cover image by Pasi Jormalainen) The final feature of the year, the Finnish symphony series, finally! It’s a contrast to the two English-speaking symphony series we did this year, and I guess kind of a callback to the end of … Continue reading The Finnish Symphony
(cover image by Ian Dooley) The series is available, in reverse chronological order, here. This has been one of the most exciting series we’ve done. There has been such a wide spectrum of styles and approaches, but really just excellent … Continue reading The American Symphony in Review
(or inspiration) The Preciousness of the Live Music Experience A soapbox moment (cover image by Adrian Korte) If my memory serves me correctly, my first post on this blog, back when I thought I’d listen to and leave notes about … Continue reading The Importance of Excellence
(cover image by Ian Baldwin) I started this (last) month’s series by talking about how difficult it was for me to appreciate and discover opera the way I listen to music (headphones, no visuals, no subtitles, etc.), but I discovered … Continue reading A Month of Opera in Review
1,000,000 is a lot of almost anything. 1 million seconds is about 11 and a half days. 1 million days is more than 2,737 years. You could log 1 million miles (ish) by circling the earth about 40 times, or … Continue reading A Million Musical Words
Phew. The series can be reviewed here. That was a ton of music. And really it’s a testament to how much excellent music there is from that small little corner of the world up there off the coast of mainland … Continue reading The English Symphony in Review
I did it again. Maybe you remember the Month of Myaskovsky back in February. This is the same thing. I used the hashtag #hbriansym on Twitter with 140-character statements about each symphony that were generally the opposite of insightful. I’ll … Continue reading A Month (or more) of Havergal Brian
This is finally happening. There was a discussion I read online recently about countries or cultures ‘pulling their weight’ or not in classical music relative to the country’s international/historical influence and how the renown of their classical musicians is in … Continue reading Series: The English Symphony
It’s a beautiful instrument. It sings and soars and highlights some of the most spine-tingling, heroic, tragic, powerful, epic, angelic moments in the pieces that we as classical music audiences love and adore. And I couldn’t find an image of … Continue reading Series: The Horn
featuring 劉宜欣 (Cindy Liu), horn; 王佩瑤, piano; 李宜錦, violin, all members of the NSO So it’s actually not the NSO, but it is three of their members, in a rare gem of a chamber concert, and seriously what timing! You’ll see what I mean soon, … Continue reading NSO’s A Mellow Walk in Time
So in case you didn’t know, and it seems virtually no one did, I spent the month of February listening to a symphony a day from Nikolai Myaskovsky. February has 28 days, and Myaskovsky has 27 symphonies and three sinfoniettas. I tweeted … Continue reading A Month of Myaskovsky
There are two big milestones coming up this week, and along with it some reflection, as far as articles are concerned. When I started this blog, my intentions were simply to have a place that I can both record and … Continue reading You Should be Listening to More Music
Fugue for Thought 