The Classical Music Guide Forums

jbuck919

It is the highest of high Anglican churches I have ever been to, which includes a lot of cathedrals. I wouldn't choose there to worship God . . . . I've heard the Anglican Church praised for keeping Christianity at bay in England. Well said! :) There's a lovely quote from a 19th century verger at a...

jbuck919

In fairness,some of the smaller towns have private colleges, university extensions, or community colleges, and the pianist may have contributed part of the " gate " to their music programs, and/or his willingness to travel to the "sticks" to bring CM there also commendable. When I was in high schoo...

jbuck919

But with the exception of the Shostakovich, not a very impressive program.

jbuck919

I heard John Scott give a recital in Glens Falls NY just before he died tragically young of a heart attack. Prior to St. Thomas, he had been the organist at St.Paul's Cathedral in London. Here is the specification for the organ: http://www.dobsonorgan.com/html/instruments/op93_newyork.html BTW I hav...

jbuck919

Several years ago, a poster from San Francisco who is no longer with us because she usually posted in a nasty or offensive way, mourned the death of the oboist of the San Francisco Symphony, whose name I think was Bennett. In his obituary, he was quoted as saying that the first time he played that c...

jbuck919

At the risk of stating the obvious, there are two other problems with Trump's position. First, he says that the US is the only country with birthright citizenship. There are actually 33 countries that have it. Second, he thinks, or says he thinks, that these people are freeloading goofoffs for 85 ye...

jbuck919

Just for the record, I was not implying that anyone should go out looking for a recording by this group. You would likely find none. (Some of our members are so oriented that way that they would make that assumption.) I was merely remarking that the performance is excellent in a world where some thi...

jbuck919

I can't wait to hear that performance of Beethoven's Violin Sonata. :) (Just when I was getting ready to compliment that guy on the unusual quality of his introduction to the trio, which would grace any program note.) The world is awash with young performing groups like that whom nobody has ever hea...

jbuck919

Strict constructionism has always been a fiction. The Supreme Court does whatever it likes and then fabricates some constitutional rationalization, and that goes all the way to Marbury vs.Madison when the Court decided to give itself that prerogative. I like them when they do what I agree with, an d...

jbuck919

After reading "Kitchen Confidential" you may never want to eat in a restaurant again. :D Never on Monday, anyway. This book shores up words I've not ever heard nor seen. And to think I used to pry mussels open and devour'em raw on the shores of all places to breathe my last, Buzzards Bay , and stil...

jbuck919

I know that jserraglio hates it when I am negative about something like this, but it does seem beyond improbable that there could be an ocean with liquid water that far out in the solar system, let alone one able to support life.

jbuck919

Forget about Amazon. Sears has long been in the category of how are the mighty fallen even in comparison with other old-fashioned department stores. Incidentally, if you search for refrigerators on Amazon, the fist models that come up are all Kenmore. Guess who that brand name used to belong to. Irr...

jbuck919

Fascinating, as Mr. Spock would say. Um, I'm going to kick myself, or you're going to wonder if I am really, a musician, or both, but here goes. I don't own the Shazzam app. What is the concerto that van Zweden is playing as a very young violinist near the beginning of the segment? It could just be ...

jbuck919

All the best to you. Before you joined, I also had very serious hospitalizations, including more than one operation, where I was virtually saved by the masters. A few here may remember.

jbuck919

jserraglio wrote: ↑
Fri Oct 19, 2018 4:59 am

jbuck919 wrote: ↑
Fri Oct 19, 2018 12:35 am
Trust me.
Sibelius's 7th is 'incredibly boring', Finlandia 'infinitely boring'. My ears tell me otherwise. I trust them.

Oh come off it. You think that endless middle section of Finlandia that goes dum-da-da-da-da-dum-dum about a thousand times is interesting?

jbuck919

In his first memoir which I read in college, he speaks extensively about his struggle with alcoholism. It's something of a miracle that he has lived to 95.

jbuck919

What a program! People don't know Summit, which is in New Jersey, very well, but I do because one of my college classmates, who was a good friend, lived there and has moved back there after having conducted an orchestra in Florida for many years. She is a superb musician, far superior to myself, and...

jbuck919

The Germans had no hope of producing a true nuclear weapon. First, their greatest scientist, Werner Heisenberg, was secretly sabatoging the project in ways that no one but another great scientist could detect. For another, the Manhattan Project in the US, which every physicist etc. worked on claimed...

jbuck919

Of course, the Nostre Dame Cathedral in Strasbourg is significant. Pity about the largely rundown surroundings. That's what happens when you turn places into museums for tourists and I'm betting there isn't much of a sense of local community in those cities either. Most of those European cathedrals...

jbuck919

Thanks for posting the link! I've been to Salzburg many times, the last time just to catch a bus to Bad Ischl. The Viennese refer to Salzburg as a "theme park"!! Quite true too. Reminded me of Strasbourg and Venice - both places very 'theme park' altogether. Venice as you probably know is seriously...

jbuck919

Sue, don't tell me this is happening in Australia, too? We are living in a completely changed world! ... that's something we all learned to do at church once a week - a 'skill' which largely seems to have gone down the drain these days"!! In Warrensburg, NY, where I play organ for the quite lovely ...

jbuck919

I couldn't get it to work in Australia. Was your use of the word "supressed" a Freudian slip? No, though I misspelled it, it is quite technical. It means that an order or a house of religious is closed down for ecclesiastical or political reasons. The entire Jesuit order, to which the current pope ...

jbuck919

even though Googe's NY headquarters is right next to my building in the Port Authority. Brian we come into the Port Authority every day we stay in Secaucus-I always thought Google was located further down by the Chelsea Market? Regards, Len https://beta-static.photobucket.com/images/o7/lensue/5/525...

jbuck919

You must watch this. Julie Andrews, looking great at 79, but that is only the beginning. You can also find an episode of Oprah that reunites the entire family, including Christopher Plummer. Also, mandatory trivia moment. The Nonnberg Abbey in Salzburg is the oldest house of religious women in the w...

jbuck919

The sad thing is that Shirley Verrett never had the career she deserved. I only know her name because she had her heyday when I was at Princeton. (Do correct me if I'm wrong.) Who now has even heard of her? She should have been as famous as many other sopranos. I heard of and heard Verrett-she was ...

jbuck919

John, what a poignant statement (in bold below)! I can understand exactly what you are feeling. As for the Brahms organ chorale preludes, if memory serves, I still have an RCA LP with Virgil Fox performing these. There are other recordings as well. In the same breath, I would ask you what you think...

jbuck919

The sad thing is that Shirley Verrett never had the career she deserved. I only know her name because she had her heyday when I was at Princeton. (Do correct me if I'm wrong.) Who now has even heard of her? She should have been as famous as many other sopranos.

jbuck919

BTW, there is a third excellent clarinet quintet from a surprising source, who, Len, also happened to compose at least one great opera. John have seen and enjoyed freischutz but never euryanthe. Len Euryanthe is a German "grand, heroic, romantic" opera by Carl Maria von Weber, first performed at th...

jbuck919

It is an interesting article as far as it goes ... maybe too far! It is all those things the writer alludes to that makes Brahms' music so memorable and loved. Brahms was a genius who probably took much away from Schumann, who I would also place into the top five composers, but some may disagree. B...

jbuck919

Brahms is unquestionably the fourth greatest composer after Bach, Mozart, and Beethoven (listing chronologically). All of those composers exhibited what this idiotic writer calls "fhythmic instability." We just had a very good post about Mozart that might touch on that topic. No matter what our late...

jbuck919

There is a lot of Sibelius that is incredibly boring, and it includes his last symphony, the seventh Not in the hands of a gifted conductor. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U-6tXgVX6vg U-6tXgVX6vg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dfwLm1rW14Q dfwLm1rW14Q Trust me. American conservatory orchestras alr...

jbuck919

The artist is Eugene Delacroix and the museum is none other than the Metropolitan.

jbuck919

As a Sibelius fan, with regard to his symphonies, I still cannot get away with either his first- or second symphony. Yes, the rest are wonderful, but I always think of his 1st and 2nd symphonies as being among his best. I feel Mahler's 1st, 3rd, and 8th symphonies are his magnum opus symphonies. Th...

jbuck919

He was a fine pianist, but there have long been a thousand or more in the world who could play rings around him, including students at Juilliard and Curtis. Rubinstein himself would have acknowledged this. In one of his memoirs, he wrote that in order to keep up with another just lucky pianist, Horo...

jbuck919

I feel obliged to state that in the movie, Melanie is not in any way sexually assaulted by the Sean O'Connor character, but merely courted by him. While I'm here, Tippi Hedren was happy when Hitchcock died. He was famous for his love of young blond actresses and hitting on them. She could not unders...

jbuck919

Good heavens! I associate Levant with the chain-smoking pianist in several movies. (He did die at 65 of a heart attack probably related to all that smoking.) I had no idea that he had that range.

jbuck919

The answer is clear. Most Americans think that "the arts" means The Grateful Dead and some things they might see on TV.

jbuck919

I said one or two books, but one of them was a rather elegant edition of the Bible, which came with a glossary. I suppose no one else here knows that excardination means allowing a priest to exercise his faculties in another diocese. Sir, he hath never fed of the dainties that are bred in a book; he...

jbuck919

After a delicious meal at our go-to french bistro in nyc Saju we leisurely got over to the Met and was pleasantly surprised-a new imaginative but basically traditional production of Samson et Dalila-the third act was very spectacular. Some very fine singing-still I thought Garanca was not quite rig...

jbuck919

For the record, I did not disagree with Mark what's-his-name I'll go on the record too-while Rimsky has proved valuable there's no doubt Donizetti blows him out of the water! Regards, Len [fleeing to Secaucus] :lol: :lol: :lol: I don't know if I'll ever warm up to Donizetti, but as much as I hate t...

jbuck919

In case anyone didn't notice, both the second and third movements are in what musicians call off-time, meaning that it has neither a duple or triple or composite time signature.

jbuck919

For the record, I did not disagree with Mark what's-his-name (I could kill myself for not remembering) about the Rimsky operas. (I call him Rimsky because that's what Stravinsky did.) In fact, I informed him that there was going to be a festival of them somewhere, not in Russia, in case he was able ...

jbuck919

they upheld it [Obamacare] for the wrong reason So when it came down to cases, instead of constitutional theories, the Court with a potential conservative majority did not overturn this landmark Democratic legislation because it so pleased but, as it most often does, deferred to the legislature. Th...

jbuck919

Just for fun, before Len joined, we had a semi-crazy member whose name escapes me (Donald Isler would remember) who thought that Rimsky was the greatest Romantic composer. He also thought that the Magnificat was Bach's greatest work.

jbuck919

Our late member Ralph Stein, a constitutional lawyer, claimed that all that was necessary to abolish the death penalty was for Congress to pass a law doing so. I think that this was one of the rare cases where he was wrong. Any state can sue to overturn such a law based on the fact that the death p...

jbuck919

I know nothing of the feral rock concerts, but I certainly don't disagree. The opera house should be unsullied by any advertising or even light shows; I am very happy to agree with that too. These rock concerts occur on the large steps at the front, in the forecourt - facing the 'toaster' building ...

jbuck919

I am just about finished reading Jan Swafford's biography of Johannes Brahms. This is a marvelous book; it breathes life into the composer and creates a human being rather than just a name at the top of a score. As a result of Swafford's excellent analyses of many of Brahms' works, I have been fill...

jbuck919

I'd just like to point out that even if the Democrats take over all the rest of government, it won't make much difference. The Supreme Court can overturn any law or even a presidential directive on a whim and has been doing so since John Marshall was Chief Justice. Even Mitch McConnell might disagr...

jbuck919

As John F undoubtedly knows, catastrophic library fires are nothing new. The fire at the library of Alexandria in Hellenistic times probably cost us untold loss of things like scrolls of the unknown plays of Sophocles.

jbuck919

Interesting research, and I am not one to use single examples to contradict statistics. However, though I flatter myself that I am extremely literate and have demonstrated that here, my parents, though literate, had no concept of a home library. There was the odd book or two hanging around, but not ...

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