Canter Bridge

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I begin my review of this splendid cd with a slice of musical heresy: listening to a ballet with no dancers on a stage in front of you is inevitably a partial experience. Perhaps its closest analogy is listening to film music, which presents lush harmonies and brilliant dramatic effect. But if you’ve never seen the film, you miss something. This is because music written to accompany ballet and music composed to embellish a film are inescapably programmatic. They depend to some degree on the thing they accompany.

OK, I’m over that. (more…)

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Full product information for this item, together with my review, my ranking of the product, and any reader comments, can be found at http://www.amazon.com.

Now that the dust has settled on the careers of both Michael Jackson and Luciano Pavarotti, comparisons are apt.

Not that you’ll get many of them here. I want merely to state that listening to Pavarotti sing these seven pieces by Donizetti, Verdi, Strauss, Rossini, and (of course) Puccini is like watching a Michael Jordan highlight film. (more…)

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Full product information for this item, together with my review, my ranking of the product, and any reader comments, can be found at http://www.amazon.com.

Like a puppy with large paws, ESPN The Magazine may grow up to be a large periodical. Right now I’d call it a fun-loving puppy without housetraining.

Don’t get me wrong, puppies are cute. I like puppies. Everybody does. (more…)

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Full product information for this item, together with my review, my ranking of the product, and any reader comments, can be found at http://www.amazon.com.

The planets aligned when the young Tchaikovsky, the London Symphony Orchestra, and Igor Markevitch came together between 1965 and 1975 in London for performances that Philips has had the good sense to issue in their high-value Philips Classics series. This two-disk set is a classic that yearns to be played on a high-quality sound system that will bring out the concert-hall effects it includes. (more…)

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Full product information for this item, together with my review, my ranking of the product, and any reader comments, can be found at http://www.amazon.com.

Lovers of Dmitri Shostakovich’s music are likely to experience the first blush of passion through the eyes rather than the ears. The distinctive cover art of the EMI Classics series juxtaposes the EMI angelic theme to Kazimir Malevich’s Supremus No. 58: Dynamic Composition in Yellow and Black, then gives the mentioned artwork pride of place on the inside of the cd cover itself. (more…)

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Full product information for this item, together with my review, my ranking of the product, and any reader comments, can be found at http://www.amazon.com.

It’s not coincidental that Mad Season begins with the hard-driving rock & roll and the suppressed, denied, explosive anger of ‘Angry’.

Not coincidental. Rather an announcement that the fabulous band Matchbox Twenty is back and is still who they were. Only better, if that’s possible. (more…)

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Full product information for this item, together with my review, my ranking of the product, and any reader comments, can be found at http://www.amazon.com.

Just as California’s Huntington Library broke the scholarly stranglehold on the Dead Sea Scrolls by making the unilateral decion to publish the photographic plates of which they were stewards, so Naxos can be credited with making affordable classical music available to us masses, who still whince when we pay for a CD. (more…)

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