Musings on ballet, classical music, the violin, and life
Concerts, recordings, reviews, musings, you name it. I’m a lifelong classical music fan.
Being haunted by music sounds like something I should be blogging about in late October, but with the sunlight growing autumnal, here in September, and nights growing longer, cooler, I think it will still work. And there’s no better way to describe the hold that Saint-Saens’ Symphony no. 3 has on me right now. Perhaps … Read more
So, I fired my characters the other day, the whole lot of them. They stood there, dumb with confusion, as I raged at them. “You’re dull, you’re cardboard cut-outs, you’re not revealing anything to me, no matter how many hours I sit at the computer or in front of my notes. I’m here, floundering, and … Read more
August 22nd was Claude Debussy’s 151st birthday. To mark this, a fellow Violinist.com member, Riz Ramadhan, shared a recording, his performance of Debussy’s classic, “Beau Soir,” (arr for piano and violin by Jascha Heifetz). Beau Soir translates as “beautiful night” and Claude Debussy composed this little piece while still a student, based on a poem … Read more
The news is splashed all over the Internet this morning. Stolen 1696 Stradivarius worth $1.8 million, recovered by UK police in central England. The crime, three years earlier: Euston Station, London. Violinist Min-Jin Kym had stopped at a sandwich shop while inside the railway station. While in there, she was momentarily distracted by two teens. … Read more
John Cage’s organ composition “As Slow As Possible” is, at the risk of sounding obvious, intended to be played slowly. Its 1987 premier lasted twenty-nine minutes. A subsequent performance lasted seventy-one minutes. Some musicians have made it last for over eight hours. But a few years after Cage’s death in 1992, a group of musicologists, … Read more