Music
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I was not always a fan of prog ("progressive") rock. In its early-to-mid 1970s heyday I was in fact dismissive of it: pretentious, over-complicated, sacrificing good songwriting for an emphasis on virtuosity not really suited for rock music. In short, it seemed to be trying to be something that rock music isn't and shouldn't be:
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In German: “Helden.” I never heard of Andrea Schroeder until a few weeks ago when I was looking for cover versions of this famous song. You know it, right? If not, click here. I was never much of a David Bowie fan. I didn’t care for the whole glam rock, sexually androgynous thing, but, more
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I've started to follow through on my idea of listening to the four violin concertos praised by Joseph Joachim, one of the great violinists of the 19th century: The Germans have four violin concertos. The greatest, most uncompromising is Beethoven's. The one by Brahms vies with it in seriousness. The richest, the most seductive, was
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Though I only heard this song a few times fifty years ago, it's come back to my mind now and then over the years, and often over the past weeks and months, for reasons which will not be mysterious when you hear the lyrics. I heard this version by Quicksilver Messenger Service, one of the
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I've never ventured very far into the Bach cantatas, having heard mostly the "greatest hits," such as BWV 140, "Wachet Auf" (which my mental ear insists on hearing as "Watch Out!"). There are just so many of them, and–I hope you will excuse me if this sounds blasphemous or at least disrespectful–there seems to be
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It occurred to me after I typed that title that A Night to Remember was a book about the sinking of the Titanic. Book and film, I find on checking. But I didn't change the title, because it is perfectly accurate. You can be assured that this night with the Mobile Symphony was not a disaster.
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No pun on the word "sweet" intended, though the piece is classifiable as a suite, though not called such. I'm a little embarrassed to say that I've subscribed to yet another online streaming service, this one for classical music only. I already had Pandora Plus, the paid version of Pandora, which, unlike the free Pandora
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I generally avoid listening to pop music during Lent, and will hold off until after Easter posting about a couple of pop albums that I've been listening to recently. But I'll mention this, which will be of interest to any fan of Portishead. Possibly that includes, apart from me, only one reader of this blog,
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I think perhaps it was your representative at the piano who gave me a bad impression of your first piano concerto. And perhaps it was only the visual distraction of his mannerisms and his gold lamé jacket that got the performance off on a bad footing with me, more or less ruining the first movement,
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I went to hear the Mobile Symphony last night, and had a very mixed reaction to what I heard. As follows: Duke Ellington: Suite From The River I had never heard this piece, a suite from a ballet, before, but I suppose I can say I had some expectations, and that it met them, but
Light On Dark Water 