In classical music, the Romantic Era lasted from around 1810 to around 1910. That century gave us some of the most famous symphonies in the repertoire. Nineteenth-century composers like Tchaikovsky, Brahms, Dvořák, Schubert, Mahler, Rachmaninoff, and others elevated the symphony
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On Pilgrimage with Murakami and Liszt August 23rd, 2014 Haruki Murakami’s latest novel, Colourless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage, has just been released and there’s that curious phrase in the title: “Years of Pilgrimage.” The reference, of course, is to Franz Liszt’s celebrated piano works about his -
Singing the Country August 19th, 2014 Joseph Canteloube (1879-1957) was a skilled composer but it’s for his unique preservation (and improvement) of the songs of his area of France that he is best remembered. Canteloube came from a départment in south central France called the Auvergne. -
“I drink, therefore I am”
Modest Mussorgsky August 18th, 2014When the legendary British surreal comedy outfit “Monty Python” announced a reunion show in 2014, tickets sold out in a matter of minutes and additional shows had to be hastily arranged. Performing in London’s O2 Arena, satellite live feeds broadcast -
Dancing into the Past August 16th, 2014 John Adams, born 1947, made the world look at East-West relations in a new light with his ground-breaking opera Nixon in China. First performed in Houston in 1987, the opera took a look behind the scenes of an event of -
Presentation of the Rose
Richard Strauss: Rosenkavalier Suite August 14th, 2014From his glorious summation of 19th-century Romanticism to the deeply probing psychological experimentations of 20th-century Modernism, the long career of Richard Strauss spanned one of the most chaotic political, social, and cultural periods in human history. Composing in all genres, -
A Master of the Orchestra – Bechara El-Khoury’s Sound Worlds August 13th, 2014 Following the release of his new CD, featuring concerti for horn, violin, and clarinet, I spend lunch getting to know Franco-Lebanese composer and poet Bechara El-Khoury. Born in Lebanon before moving to France and eventually becoming a French national, his -
Egos and Ballet August 13th, 2014 Ravel: Daphnis et Chloé Suite No. 2 Once upon a time, a ballet dancer had a dream of doing a ballet on a classical Greek theme. At the time, he was just a dancer in the Imperial Russian Ballet and -
Alma Mahler – Giving Music Life August 12th, 2014 I’m still a little bit scared of Alma Mahler. I can feel her gigantic personality looming over me, transcending the years, inevitably offering some acid-tongued rebuke at my futile attempts to capture this complex and volatile person in writing. When