Musings on ballet, classical music, the violin, and life
Concerts, recordings, reviews, musings, you name it. I’m a lifelong classical music fan.
It was a night for music lovers, not just ballet lovers, last Saturday at the San Francisco Ballet. Beethoven’s Piano Trio no. 1, Saint Saens’ Symphony no. 2 (injected with the sublime 2nd movement from his Symphony no. 3) and Stravinsky’s iconic The Rite of Spring. We are so fortunate, we of the San Francisco … Read more
A revised version of this appeared at Violinist.com in 2008 As the story has it, when Hungarian-born 20th century composer Franz Schmidt received the news in 1932 that his beloved daughter and only child, Emma, had died in childbirth, it was just prior to his setting to work on his Symphony no. 4 in C … Read more
One doesn’t think of the career of a professional violinist as being fraught with peril and high drama, but on the night of January 27th, violinist Frank Almond, concertmaster of the Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra and founder of the popular “Frankly Music” series, was leaving a chamber music performance in Wisconsin when a stranger approached him … Read more
I’ve always liked Chopin and I’m wondering now if maybe everyone with at least a hint of classical music under their belt does as well. Particularly ballet peeps: it’s so ideal for pliés and the adagio section of class, or the stretching between barre and center work. One time I was in a San Francisco … Read more
NUT·CRACK·ER ˈnətˌkrakər/ Noun A small aluminum device for cracking nuts. A little painted wooden soldier with a dislocating jaw that performs aforementioned task. An 1892 ballet originally choreographed by Marius Petipa (and Lev Ivanov), first performed in the U.S. by the San Francisco Ballet on Christmas Eve in 1944, now a holiday tradition throughout the … Read more