Today, I would like to share with you a wonderful short, light piece, “Introduction to Rondo,” by French composer Camille Saint-Saëns (1835-1921). Saint-Saëns originally intended this piece to be the conclusion ..
Today, I would like to share with you a wonderful short, light piece, “Introduction to Rondo,” by French composer Camille Saint-Saëns (1835-1921). Saint-Saëns originally intended this piece to be the conclusion ..
Today I’d like to share with you a composer and concerto that are completely new to me: Giovanni Bottesini’s Double Bass Concerto No. 2 in B minor. Bottesini (1821-1889) was born in Northern Italy. He studied violin ..
I’d like to share with you a terrific interview with Hungarian conductor Ivan Fischer. He shows different sides of Beethoven. I love how he provides little, unique insights into the composer. He explains how, before Beethoven, ..
This is a continuation of my journey into musicals (previous musicals). In this exploratory journey of musicals we’ll briefly venture into the adjacent world of opera, as I’ll discuss both Aida the opera and Aida the musical, ..
It is hard to name much writing that was published more than four hundred years ago and is still read today. Religious texts and the works of William Shakespeare come to mind, and that is about it. And then there is Don Quixote ..
This is a continuation of my journey into musicals (previous musicals). West Side Story is a modern (1950s) version of Romeo and Juliet, set in New York. Leonard Bernstein (1918–1990) composed the music and Stephen ..
This is a continuation of my journey into musicals (previous musicals). In 1997 I went to London with two friends who at the time were dating for a week. I was having a tumultuous relationship with a girlfriend at the time ..
This is a continuation of my journey into musicals (previous musicals). The Phantom of the Opera was composed by Andrew Lloyd Weber, with lyrics by Tim Rice. The musical is based on the book by French author Gaston Leroux, ..
This is a continuation of my journey into musicals (I discussed Juno and Avos last time). In the early 1990s I was mesmerized by Evita, a musical composed by Andrew Lloyd Webber. Let’s take a small detour and talk about ..
In December 2021 my wife and I took our girls Hannah (15) and Mia Sarah (7) to see Steven Spielberg’s revival of West Side Story (my son Jonah was away to college). As I started writing about West Side Story, I inadvertently ..