Archive for September, 2008
Stephen Sondheim’s “The Story So Far…”
By Daniel Felsenfeld
I. Am. So. Excited! As a longstanding admirer of Stephen Sondheim, the great theatre genius who made poetry out of urbane bitchiness and who brought music of a certain harmonic spikiness to the mainstream, I was thrilled when this gorgeous boxed set arrived at my doorstep. Sony’s Sondheim: The Story So Far… is [...]
That Classical Groove
View the O’Reilly Street E-card!
By Daniel Felsenfeld
Sometimes when classical musicians jazz it, the results can be embarrassing. So I confess a little trepidation when I popped in James Galway’s record O’Reilly Street, a collaboration with the Grammy-lauded Cuban group Tiempo Libre. Big Surprise! Really. If you like 1960s jazz of the Guaraldi variety (think [...]
Bid for VIP tickets to see Yo-Yo Ma, Sony OLED TV, and more!
Join in the musical majesty of the world-renowned Carnegie Hall!
You are invited to bid for tickets to the Sony Philharmonic Orchestra featuring Yo-Yo Ma, sets of tickets to see the Orchestra of St. Luke’s, a private musicale featuring Midori, as well as an OLED Television!
As the winning bidder of this auction lot, you’ll receive tickets [...]
Pictures at An Exhibition, played by William Kapell
By Daniel Felsenfeld
For those of us who grew up listening to Mussorgsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition in its orchestrated form, the piano version takes a little getting used to, especially in a weathered recording such as William Kapell’s on the William Kapell reDiscovered set. Perhaps you are more accustomed, in the opening “Promenade” movement, to [...]
Bach Suite in A-minor, from Kapell reDiscovered
By Daniel Felsenfeld
Sometimes if you love classical music you have to put up with some things that are old. That’s just the nature of the beast—the music is old, and from time to time, despite the best efforts of studio engineers, recordings can be wonderful but just not up-to-the-minute in terms of technology. But most [...]
Joshua Bell’s The Four Seasons CD Giveaway
Win a Copy of Joshua Bell’s The Four Seasons!!
Sony Classical and Strings magazine present your chance to win a free copy of the Grammy® Award-winning violinist’s first recording of Vivaldi’s classic. Visit Strings magazine’s homepage at http://www.allthingsstrings.com and enter now! This special giveaway ends October 20, 2008.
For more infomation, visit www.JoshuaBell.com.
Final thoughts on Leonard Bernstein: The Original Jacket Collection
By Daniel Felsenfeld
With sadness, I come to the end of my posts about the Bernstein Conducts Bernstein: Original Jacket Collection. I could spend months on these records, in grand exegesis of the personal meaning of all of these works, the spectacular quality of the composition, or the puzzle that was Leonard Bernstein. I could spend [...]
Serenade from Leonard Bernstein: The Original Jacket Collection
By Daniel Felsenfeld
I grew up in Orange County, specifically in a small “town” called Placentia. I use “town” in scare quotes because it tends to conjure up Agee-like images of general stores and nosy neighbors, but that was not the case. More a suburb that rolled easily and unnoticeably into the next, so it wasn’t [...]
More on Leonard Bernstein: The Original Jacket Collection
By Daniel Felsenfeld
An excerpt of Harold C. Schonberg’s bitter 1971 The New York Times review of Bernstein’s Mass:
“For love and the brotherhood of man will not solve our problems. Better housing, jobs for everybody, and adherence to the Bill of Rights will do a lot more. Anyway, the ones who talk loudest about universal love are [...]
Leonard Bernstein’s Mass, from The Original Jacket Collection
By Daniel Felsenfeld
The election season has made it clear: we live in the most complex of times, divided times. I continue to think of a piece of music that I love—love—a piece that tries, fails, tries again, fails again, and doggedly keeps on trying regardless to advance a dramatic retelling of a particular kind of [...]