I can't recall if my father owned a copy of Beethoven's Violin Concerto. Our resources were limited and he most concerned himself with collecting the recordings of great pianists performing the highlights of the late Classical and Romantic repertoire. So it is entirely possible that my first brush with Beethoven's Violin Concerto came in 1983 … Continue reading The Breath of Life: Beethoven’s Violin Concerto
Month: August 2022
The Friday Symposium: Thomas Tallis and White Châteauneuf-du-Pape
On this edition of the Friday Symposium, we go even further back in music history to motets composed by Thomas Tallis. One of my Desert Island Discs is certainly the Tallis Scholars' recording of Spem in Alium, along with other Tallis compositions. https://open.spotify.com/album/69n01dGwqZ5d5b1GITfP7G?si=I9ki400PSXy2UlHN957LzA One of the most complex and ethereal compositions of its or any … Continue reading The Friday Symposium: Thomas Tallis and White Châteauneuf-du-Pape
Echoes of Fate: Beethoven’s Appassionata Sonata
I know nothing that is greater than the Appassionata; I would like to listen to it every day. It is marvellous, superhuman music. I always think with pride – perhaps it is naïve of me – what marvellous things humans can do. Vladimir Ilyich Lenin to Maxim Gorky Read The Tempest. Ludwig van Beethoven, when … Continue reading Echoes of Fate: Beethoven’s Appassionata Sonata
The Friday Symposium: Bach and The Martini
Leave it to academia to turn something wonderful into something dreadful. When most people hear the world "symposium" today, they think of a bunch of talking heads sitting on a podium massaging their own egos. In the Ancient World, however, a symposium was decidedly more fun--after all, the word symposium is derived from the Greek … Continue reading The Friday Symposium: Bach and The Martini
Beethoven Goes Boom: In Celebration of the Memory of a Great Man
You either die a hero of you live long enough to see yourself become the villain. The Dark Knight Beethoven’s Symphonies are major events in music history. And that really began in 1803 with his Third, the Eroica. Settle in, this is going to be a long one. To understand what Beethoven was doing in … Continue reading Beethoven Goes Boom: In Celebration of the Memory of a Great Man
A Gertus History of Music 