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…
Beethoven’s Farewell to the Piano
I remember the first time I learned Beethoven’s Farewell to the Piano, a simple, two-part, four-page piece in the first volume of a piano series called The…
Music and the Enlightenment
Some of the most profound changes ever to befall Western art music happened in the middle of the 18th century, around the time of the death of Johann…
Robbie Robertson and The Last Waltz
In the summer of 1979, I worked in a small town in southern Ontario where one day I learned the Rockabilly artist Ronnie Hawkins was playing at…
Why Bob Dylan?
In January of 2022, my dad and I, one Saturday morning, took a drive. Our main conversation topic had been about getting concert tickets to an artist…
Nadia Boulanger and the Transcendent Meaning of Music
“Music seems to exist in and of itself, like a temple built around your soul.” The story of music in the twentieth century would have been very…
The Music of Maurice Duruflé
Maurice Duruflé (1902-1986) is a unique case in the history of music: There are few other instances of a composer being considered a significant creator despite composing…
The Power of Francis Poulenc’s “Dialogues of the Carmelites”
The Metropolitan Opera’s series of High Definition (HD) broadcasts, transmitting opera performances live into movie theaters around the world, has been a bright spot on the cultural…
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,…
The Drama of Western Music
When thinking or writing about Western classical music, we are so often concerned with touting its brilliance and greatness that we seldom place it in context with…
The Top Ten Greatest Violin Concertos
The violin concerto as a form of music has endured for some 300 years and remains, alongside the piano concerto, the most popular type of concerto played…
Joseph Haydn: A Primer
Quite unjustly, he stands in the shadow of his young friend, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. Though nearly every educated music lover acknowledges him as one of the great…
Mozart the Romanticist
In an essay titled “The Wild and Terrible Mozart,” Stephen Klugewicz reflected on the dark, demonic and awe-inspiring sides of Mozart’s music, often ignored in popular depictions…