What is Mozart’s music if not naked, pure, exposed, unadulterated, magnificent beauty? A few weeks ago, we had the TSO’s season opener with accomplished pianist Kirill Gerstein making his first appearance in Taiwan, and it was a fine one. The NSO’s … Continue reading NSO’s 2017 Season Opener
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
He couldn’t stop himself. Is this the same image I used last time? While Brahms was perhaps compulsive about perfecting something before he published it, agonizing for ages over a work (his first symphony took something like two decades), Bruckner … Continue reading The Bruckner Problem
There’s something about these two…. This is a complicated heavy topic, one which I am not really quite ready to address. I have been more and more enthralled with the music of each of these great composers (mostly the symphonies), but I see similarities that link them on an intriguing, deep, almost spiritual level. (They even look a bit like each other in the photos above, no?) There are the obvious parallels: they were both Austrian composers who left the world nine-ish symphonies with some unfinished bits. They are both known for their ninth symphonies (among other works) (see the … Continue reading Schubert and Mahler