On the evening of Saturday, November 25, 1882 Arthur Sullivan took his bows with William Gilbert for another great success in the pair's series of operettas: Iolanthe had come into being. W.S. Gilbert's sketch for the Lord Chancellor in IolantheAnd y...
A bit on some of the recordings currently wending their way through my ears. Igor Stravinsky: The Soldier's Tale Igor Stravinsky conducts the Columbia Chamber Ensemble in 1961 and 1967Jeremy Irons provides the narration in 2006.Sony/BMG Ah, the magi...
Bloomington, Indiana, Sunday March 5, 1967: the Foglesong clan, including my teenaged self, gathered before our once-fancy, now-aging Zenith "hand-wired" color TV to watch the ABC network broadcast of the Otto Preminger film of "Porgy ...
This is the third in a continuing series of articles about the "little masters" (kleinmeisters) of the later 18th century. The previous two installments:The little masters: introduces the concept as well as Vanhal and Salieri.Big little mas...
From time to time I have been known to leave the sacred confines of "classical" music (whatever the heck that term really means) and to write about movie music. Try here, here, here, and here. I wouldn't want to spend a great deal my time l...
On January 6, 1839 Robert Schumann wrote from Vienna to the publishing firm of Breitkopf & Hartel: Several days ago I visited Franz Schubert's brother and saw with astonishment the treasures that are in his keeping. There are . . . four or five s...
This is the second in a planned series of articles about the Viennese Classical kleinmeisters, those composers working in the shadow of the far better remembered Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven. The first article, comprising of an introduction and infor...
Where the ground is fertile and well-watered, stuff grows. The seeds will come -- blown in on the wind, dormant in the soil, deliberately planted. It doesn't matter: soil primed for growing will produce life. A society cultivates a fertile field for ...
Commencement at the San Francisco Conservatory looms. Presently I'll don my academic togs and sit in communal majesty onstage while beaming approvingly at our student/survivors who are receiving degrees, post-graduate diplomas, or artist's certificat...
Over the course of several articles devoted to the Alfred Hertz tenure (1915-1930) at the San Francisco Symphony I have been heard to bemoan the unavailability of the fine set of RCA Victor recordings made by Hertz and the SFS between 1925 and 1928. ...
