Category Archives: Music

Johannes Brahms’ Quintet for Piano and Strings in F Minor, Op. 34

Sony has taken the occasion of pianist Leon Fleisher’s eightieth birthday to re-release a number of his recordings of a wide range of music, which happily leads me back to some of my favorite territory with this disc, the music … Continue reading

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Johannes Brahms’ Symphony No. 1 in C Minor, Op. 68, Variations on a Theme by Haydn, Op. 56A; Sonata in F Minor for Two Pianos, Op. 34B, Variations on a Theme By Haydn for Two Pianos, Op. 56B

Johannes Brahms was, to put it mildly, one of the more thoughtful composers in the history of Western music, as evidenced by the fact that, although he is known to have been working on a symphony in 1854 (never finished, … Continue reading

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Vijay Iyer Sextet’s Far From Over

In the middle of the most turbulent year in America since 1968, the Vijay Iyer Sextet steps forth with an hour of jazz that roars and soars and sings with defiance and joy. Iyer in the liner notes makes clear … Continue reading

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John Reischman and The Jaybirds’ On That Other Green Shore

If you want solid, no-nonsense bluegrass music these days, you won’t go wrong with any release by John Reischman and The Jaybirds. Their latest release On That Other Green Shore is no exception. That’s no accident, of course. One of … Continue reading

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Béla Bartók’s Concerto for Orchestra, Sz. 116; Sonata for Two Pianos and Percussion, Sz. 110; Improvisations on Hungarian Peasant Songs, Sz. 74

If you’ve been following our explorations of twentieth-century Western music, you already know a bit about Béla Bartók, one of the century’s most singular and prodigious talents. “Prodigious” because his career spanned the first half of the century, from the … Continue reading

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Quercus’s Nightfall

I was gobsmacked when I came across Quercus’s first, self-titled, album a couple of years after its 2013 release. The combination of June Tabor’s husky-silky delivery of largely traditional songs in a jazz setting that was somehow lush but also … Continue reading

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Dmitri Shostakovich’s Symphony No. 5, Op. 47, Chamber Symphony for String Orchestra, Op. 110a

When I was first making my acquaintance with the range of the twentieth-century “classical” canon, the Shostakovich Fifth was the penultimate achievement of Soviet music. Shostakovich, although a loyal Soviet citizen, was also an artist, which is a breed not … Continue reading

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Arvo Pärt’s Da Pacem

The music of Arvo Pärt, one of the best known contemporary composers, is something I’ve always found attractive. From my first recording of Passio, which was, believe it or not, my beach music for a whole summer way back when, … Continue reading

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Bernd Alois Zimmermann’s Canto di speranza

West German composer Bernd Alois Zimmerman is one of those unclassifiable artists whose style progressed through what seems to be the normal twentieth-century pattern: neoclassicism, atonality and the twelve-tone row of Schoenberg, serialism, and finally a kind of polyglot style … Continue reading

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Terry Riley’s Requiem for Adam

Terry Riley’s Requiem for Adam was written as a memorial to Adam Harrington, son of David Harrington, first violinist of Kronos Quartet. Adam died suddenly at the age of 16 while walking with his family on Mt. Diablo, near San … Continue reading

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