If you listen to Tchaikovsky’s “Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy” from the Nutcracker, you are acutely aware of a silvery, ethereal and otherworldly sound coming from the orchestra. That sound, similar to that of the glockenspiel—a percussion instrument composed

The time you spend with a stand partner in an orchestra frequently exceeds the time you spend with your spouse. I had three long-term stand partners all vastly different in approaches. My first stand partner was the veteran and irascible

It’s hard to imagine someone who called the music of Kurt Weill (the composer of ‘Mack the Knife’) ‘drivel’ eventually writing musicals and popular songs himself. Yet for Marc Blitzstein, this huge shift in aesthetic was just the start –

The fictional HBO series Game of Thrones, already in its fourth season and slated to run for at least another 2 years has once again garnered a number of impressive awards and accolades. Loosely based on the novel A Song

The Romantic Violin Concerto Erich Korngold (1897-1957) was a modern composer with a Romantic touch. He is considered, along with Max Steiner (Gone with the Wind) and Alfred Newman (Wuthering Heights / How the West was Won) as one of

In search of an identity for Classical music Marc Blitzstein: Piano Sonata The enormous political and cultural changes that flooded Europe in the first decade of the 20th century led to a dismantling of political, social and artistic structures. As

One of the most eagerly encoded images in a number of different cultures and contexts is the angel sitting on a cloud and playing the harp. What could be more comforting upon leaving this earthly realm than being greeted by

What are my impressions of Poland? The deadly WWII, Holocaust and Threnody to the Victims of Hiroshima… Throughout my college years, this country always appeared to me as miserable. This year in March, after a month long struggle, I finally