A Conductor at Twilight: Michael Tilson Thomas’ Last Days at the Podium
Last week I called the San Francisco Symphony box office to switch dates for a subscription ticket with a conflict: Sunday’s performance of Beethoven’s Symphony No. 9,…
The Dazzling Dvorak You’ve Yet to Hear
So you’re acquainted with Antonin Dvořák’s buoyant, instantly accessible “New World Symphony,” are you? And you loved it? Yay, you are part of an enormous fan club that…
The Classical Girl’s Very Casual “Top 10 Classical Ballets” List
Google “Top 10 classical ballets” or something similar, and you’ll find a whole slew of lists that, in truth, really don’t vary a whole lot. Some feature more…
The Many Musical Moods of Edvard Grieg
Oh, the many moods and stories Norwegian composer Edvard Grieg conjures in my mind, my heart. There’s the transcendent “Morning Mood” from his Peer Gynt Suite, the haunting yet…
Rimsky-Korsakov’s Magical “Scheherazade”
Warning: do not attempt to drive or operate heavy machinery while listening to Rimsky-Korsakov’s Scheherazade for the first time. Said composition is known to have caused feelings of extreme uplift,…
Mystery Revealed: Schubert’s Impromptu No. 3 in G-flat
Tell me if this has ever happened to you: you’re out and about when you hear a brief passage of gorgeous classical music, which never gets identified,…
Swans, Art and Pain
The closing scene of the ballet, Swan Lake, carries a real-life poignancy that can be hard to capture in 19th-century story ballets. In the ghostly light of…
Cinematic Bliss: The Korngold Violin Concerto
I was driving when I heard Erich Wolfgang Korngold’s Violin Concerto the first time. It was a library CD I’d just borrowed, back in the days when…
César Franck’s Soaring Symphony in D Minor
Many of us have been in a church or concert hall where an organ is being played, all those chords and majestic sonorities cleverly manipulated to create…
Ten Odd Facts about Handel’s “Messiah”
While Handel’s Messiah is, for many, an annual Advent spectacle—certainly orchestras and choirs across the country and abroad are delivering right now—in the Classical Girl household, the 1741…
Finnish Perfection: The Sibelius Violin Concerto
It’s complex, gripping, devilishly complicated, and sounds like no other concerto in the violin repertoire. Listening to Finnish composer Jean Sibelius’ violin concerto, you hear dark, wintry night; pure,…
Ten Spooky Classical Music Favorites for Halloween
It’s Halloween, and you’re looking for that perfect, spooky Halloween music that’s a little more sophisticated than “The Monster Mash” and “Thriller” and “Werewolves of London.” Look…
Haunted by Camille Saint-Saëns’ “Organ Symphony”
Being haunted by music sounds like something I should be writing about in late October, but I think it will still work. And there’s no better way to…
Creating Tchaikovsky’s First Symphony
While a longtime fan of Tchaikovsky, I must confess that, up to a year ago, I’d never heard his Symphony No. 1, subtitled Winter Daydreams. Further, a lot…
Sibelius, “Finlandia,” and the Cry of Freedom
Jean Sibelius’ tone-poem, Finlandia, wasn’t supposed to be the program headliner that Saturday night at the San Francisco Symphony. The main draw was the Sibelius Violin Concerto, gracefully and sensitively…