Scared ya Didn’t I?
Composer Johannes Brahms knew well the shock effect of sudden dynamic changes. George Marriner Maull exposes this Brahms trait as found in Movement 4 of Brahms’s Symphony No. 2. Inside…
Brahms
Turned Off or Turned On?
In his article for Music Australia entitled: What’s Turning Young People Off Classical Music Concerts? Graham Strahle poses the question “. . .what are the barriers that seem to be…
Mickey Mouse & Mozart
. . .one of my longer rants. Professional symphony orchestras in the United States face an annual challenge that we refer to in jest, belying the utter seriousness of the…
Secrets of Conducting
We know what you’re thinking! Who is “we?” We conductors know what many audience members are thinking when you attend our performances. From your perspective, it looks like a lion…
Classical Beatles
The WQXR* blog post Timeline: The Beatles Meet Classical Music contains a lot of interesting information regarding the evolution of The Beatles’ creative process that ultimately led them to integrate…
I was thrilled when I finished listening to your second episode of my favorite piece of music. I always got emotional when I ‘heard’ the second movement of Beethoven’s Seventh [Symphony], but this time I was deeply touched as I could do much more than just ‘hearing’, I could finally ‘listen’ to Beethoven!