Monthly Archives: August 2003

If you’re as old as I am, you can remember a time when Vivaldi’s The Four Seasons was one of music’s unknown quantities. My Gramophone Shop Encyclopedia from 1948 – the year the long-playing disc hit the market – doesn’t … Continue reading →

Twenty years, give or take, separate Beethoven’s “Emperor” Piano Concerto and Berlioz’s “Fantastic” Symphony; one week separated their presence at the Hollywood Bowl (in very classy performances, if you were wondering). The two works sing in different languages, but they … Continue reading →

Strange are the workings of the Fates. A couple of weeks ago, as I rummaged through the collected writings of Olin Downes in search of his adulatory bloviations on the matter of Jan Sibelius, the telephone rang with the news … Continue reading →

Tod Machover’s Hyperstring Trilogy, on the Oxingale label and by some distance the most exhilarating disc release of these otherwise drab summer months, sets off memories of the not-too-distant past and stirs up all kinds of hopes for a not-too-hopeless … Continue reading →