In essence

1709 Posts
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Ring Bells! Sing Songs!: The Musical VI
Roaring onto the Broadway stage and changing the musical forever was Disney’s The Lion King, with music by Elton John. No musical had taken a children’s animation as its source and turning the fantasies of a cartoon into a performance
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A Champagne Toast to 2018!
People across the globe celebrate the arrival of the New Year with a variety of delectable customs. In Spain, tradition dictates the eating of 12 grapes—washed down with a glass of Cava—with each stroke of the clock at midnight. In
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A Musical New Year in Vienna
The New Year’s concert by the Vienna Philharmonic is commonly regarded as the most important classical concert worldwide. Seen by an estimated audience of 1 billion viewers around the world, the concert always features works by the Viennese Strauss family,
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A Single-Malt and Vodka Toast to 2018!
It’s truly a shame that I’ve never heard the live lecture by Daniel Barenboim on how whiskey and classical music resemble one another. In this 2006 talk entitled “Whisky is liquid music,” the pianist and conductor argues that “both experiences
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Making Fun of Wagner
In 1879, the French composer Emmanuel Chabrier requested leave from his job at the French Ministry of the Interior so that he could travel to Munich, which was the only place in the world to hear Wagner’s opera Tristan und
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Dmitry Kabalevsky: Classics for Kids
The composer and educator Dmitry Kabalevsky wrote, “We should never for an instant forget our main purpose, which is to interest our audience in music, to emotionally fascinate them, to infect them with our love of music.” The composer’s interest
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Ring Bells! Sing Songs!: The Musical V
The 1970s brought us musicals based on contemporary society (Company), memories of the past (Follies, Gigi, Evita, Sweeney Todd, Cats), stories based on the Bible (Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat) and stories from French novels of a century earlier
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At the Center of the Musical Universe
Franz Joseph Haydn II
Over a period of 20 years, Johannes Brahms cautiously approached composition via different genres, carefully isolating the required musical elements. He experimented with orchestral colors in his Serenades, blended symphonic sketches with a sonata for two pianos to produce his
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