Archive for August, 2008
Joshua Bell’s The Four Seasons
By Daniel Felsenfeld
For a long time, I was convinced I never wanted to hear Vivaldi’s The Four Seasons again. It was one of those over-trotted-out warhorses, a burnt chestnut, spoiled meat…just name your cliché! After years of over saturation (though somehow never actually voluntarily listening to it; this is one of those cultural phenomena where [...]
Jerry Herman’s La Cage
By Daniel Felsenfeld
I am very glad that Sony is putting out for digital release the scores of Jerry Herman, whose music I’ve always found charming, elegant, debonair, all the things a good Broadway score should sound be! But I have an especial attachment to the show La Cage Aux Folles, perhaps his strongest work.
The [...]
Star Wars: The Clone Wars
By Daniel Felsenfeld
Blogging from the road, so I might be briefer than usual, but felt I had to chime in a little about the soundtrack to the latest Star Wars episode, the Clone Wars. The disc is out as of yesterday, and the movie comes this Friday so I am in the odd position [...]
Sessions’ From My Diary, and final thoughts on Leon Fleisher
By Daniel Felsenfeld
Just to prove that music can be “searching” in different ways, Leon Fleisher, ever the champion of the music of his own time, offers a sensitive and plangent reading of Roger Sessions’ most ruminative of pieces, From My Diary. This composer is one of the greats of the 20th Century, a legendary symphonist [...]
Schubert’s Piano Sonata, played by Leon Fleisher
By Daniel Felsenfeld
It is too easy to give certain pieces of music weight they might not warrant, freight them with essences far beyond the composer’s scope or intention (even if that composer happened to be music’s greatest genius ever, such as Franz Schubert). It is also easy to envision a great composer as a robed [...]