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Archive for 2007

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 musical genius of Bach can be savored in any number of configurations. But you’d be hard pressed to find Bach speaking more exquisitely than via these compositions for violin and keyboard. (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.

James Horner’s soundtrack for A Beautiful Mind is as psychologically intense as the film it so effectively embellishes. (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.

Rostroprovich and Richter are poster children for the merits of recording the lesser-known works of past masters. It is astonishing to believe that the Beethoven of, say, Symphonies, 3, 7, and 9 also sat himself down to compose small music like these pieces for two amiable but sometimes socially incompatible instruments. (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.

Jewel’s debut album struck a chord for the sheer non-ordinary quality of her voice. Even if the lyrics sometimes seem a bit overwrought and over-wise, the sound is convincing, especially when taken from a young artist just making her breakout. (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.

Life without Ana Cirré is what most of the world’s music lovers endure, oblivious to this brilliantly alluring Spanish songstress and her songs of love, nostalgia, loss, and seduction. (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.

Some of the polite arts that become trumped by technology on a functional level nevertheless preserve their potency as communicative acts. Such is the handwritten note in the age of email, voicemail, and Instant Messaging. (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.

Naxos cut its teeth on this kind of recording. Two sturdy Beethoven symphonies are played by a Central European (in this case Hungarian) orchestra with good, serviceable effect. (more…)

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Sergei Rachmaninoff’s music for piano and orchestra is easy to love. Its lyrical romanticism and connections with successors that lead even to jazz piano tend to be accessible to contemporary listeners. It is some of the most stirring music ever written, though it does not earn the respect of work written by canonical masters of the genre like Mozart and Beethoven. (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.

I find Brahms’ symphonies ponderous, at least over against his undeniable brillance with, say, a violin concerto. (more…)

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Leave it to the apostle Paul, that most bodacious of the Jesus movement’s constitutive generation, to speak in such extreme terms. Where others might have spoken of humankind’s ability to improve, repent, achieve, and so forth—with God’s good help as the wind in our sails—Paul simply says we are dead. Unable. Inert. Incapable. Clueless. Cold. (more…)

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