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I watched Life is Beautiful with my wife and older kids (15-year-old Jonah and 10-year-old Hannah). Two-year-old Mia Sarah hung around, too, but didn’t really watch it. Life is Beautiful is an Oscar-winning Italian movie, ..
Today I wanted to share with you a short solo piano piece by Hungarian composer Franz Liszt, called “Liebestraum No. 3” (“Dream of Love”). I almost (almost) want to issue a personal guarantee that this piece will ..
“Think of a man whose health can never be restored, and who from sheer despair makes matters worse instead of better. Think, I say, of a man whose brightest hopes have come to nothing, to whom love and friendship are but torture, ..
Today I wanted to share with you the “Swan Lake Suite” (an excerpt from the ballet of the same name). Swan Lake is Tchaikovsky’s version of Romeo and Juliet. Though today the ballet is considered to be the pinnacle ..
I want to share with you Franz Liszt’s Piano Concerto No. 1. As one of my favorite childhood memories, I remember walking home with my father on a sunny Sunday afternoon. I was maybe nine years old. There was the sound ..
Today I wanted to share with you a composition from “Side by Side” a 1994 recording of Oscar Peterson (piano) playing together with one and only Itzhak Perlman (violin). I think I owned this CD recording for twenty years ..
Last time I shared with my readers Saint-Saens’ Piano Concerto No. 1. To my surprise, I received a lot more emails about this piano concerto than any other piece of music. However, most of them said something along the lines ..
Today I want to share with you Camille Saint–Saens’ Piano Concerto No. 1. This is not Saint–Saens’ most popular concerto – his concerto No. 2 (which I’ll share with you next week) is by far the best-known ..
I am really excited to share with you “Allegro de Concert,” by Frederic Chopin. Chopin wrote only two concertos, and both were published in 1830. He started working on a third concerto soon thereafter, but never finished. ..
Norma premiered in La Scala (the Mecca of opera in Millan Italy) in 1831. Casta Diva is one of the most challenging arias ever written for soprano. During the rehearsals before the premier Italian soprano Giuditta Pasta ..