One wonders what people will say about John Williams in the year 2050. The man just keeps producing scores that, if it were possible, surpass the prior one in elegance, emotional weight, and sheer, gorgeous, spellbinding beauty.
Gushing?
I don’t think so. Listen to this soundtrack before you conclude that this reviewer has gone out-of-his-mind starry. Continue Reading »
Posted in reseña | Tagged film music, music, reseña | Leave a Comment »
The six-note motif that introduces Robert Schumann’s Overture (later Scherzo and Finale), Op. 52 is the calling card of a formidable Romantic composer. In the main, the Schumann pieces included in this anthology of his overtures make due on the promise put down by those first six notes.
The Overture to Genoveva is as evocative as the tale its opera tells. The overtures to ‘Bride of Messina’, ‘Julius Caesar’, ‘Hermann and Dorothea’, ‘Faust’, and ‘Manfred’ are all beautifully performed on this 1992 Naxos recording by the Polish National Radio Symphony Orchestra under the baton of Johannes Wildner.
The market for operatic overtures is not huge. Naxos has done us a service with this serviceable presentation.
Posted in reseña | Tagged classical music, Johannes Wildner, music, Polish National Radio Symphony Orchestra, reseña, Robert Schumann | Leave a Comment »
It is difficult to take the measure of rubble.
One cannot tell where one wall ended and another began. To guess the function of the buildings that are now this pile of stone is the stuff of speculation. One can only wonder who lived here, who died, who loved, who screamed, who longed for something better than this mountain of rock and dust. Continue Reading »
Posted in textures | Tagged 1 Peter, biblical reflection, Ezekiel, Peter, textures | Leave a Comment »
From the heart of Central Europe in the first quarter of the twentieth century comes this penetrating, challenging, occasionally disturbing, and ever rewarding music for small ensembles. The Prague-born Prazak Quartet is of course equal to the challenge.
Leos Janacek’s music for string quartet show what the genre can be. Easily mistaken for a weak, limpid subset of classical music, music for quartet a la Janacek is as sinewy and energetic as it gets. Continue Reading »
Posted in reseña | Tagged classical music, Leos Janacek, music, Prazak Quartet | Leave a Comment »
Ezekiel makes for hard reading.
My own rather buoyant hopefulness has taken some hits in these weeks of reading slowly through this insistent book, determined as it is to mark out the profile of Israel’s failure and cut the ground from under false optimism. The text is punctuated by theodicy—what some have defined as ‘justifying the ways of God to man’—by the phrase ‘Then you shall know that I am YHWH’. Continue Reading »
Posted in textures | Tagged biblical reflection, Ezekiel, textures | Leave a Comment »
After a season of travel, it’s beautiful to be back home where a holiday morning can be spent in my easy chair with some good books and a pair of binoculars to oversee my backyard, where my birds are enjoying the overdue filling of their feeders. Continue Reading »
Posted in fauna, my hometown | Tagged birding, fauna | Leave a Comment »
It is important to the ethos of the book of Ezekiel that doomed people have been warned.
The logic of divine castigation requires this. Just as the desolation wrought by his overdue judgement will indicate to survivors that YHWH has been about (‘Then you shall know that I am YHWH …’), so it is important that people will have heard the voice of YHWH’s warning prior to the destruction of all that is dear to them. Continue Reading »
Posted in textures | Tagged biblical reflection, Ezekiel, textures | Leave a Comment »
This handsome volume reflects the high quality standards, cantankerous spirit, and eccentrically traditionalist preferences that seem to characterize many of us who are drawn to the impractical beauty we insist upon calling fountain pens. Continue Reading »
Posted in paterfamilias, reseña | Tagged Jonathan Steinberg, writing instruments | 1 Comment »
Nobody does high-energy, emotionally exuberant musical praise like Australia’s Hillsong. This reviewer is happy to leave the debate about whether Hillsong is a church or a production company to those closer to the ground. Meanwhile, I’ll enjoy the music. Continue Reading »
Posted in reseña | Tagged Darlene Zschech, Hillsong, music, reseña, worship, worship music | Leave a Comment »
Joseph Naveh’s classic work constitutes ‘an attempt to survey the Aramaic epigraphic material from its very beginnings until the third century B.C.E. It examines the development of the Aramaic script in its various styles on the basis of the dated inscriptions.’ Continue Reading »
Posted in denkschrift, reseña | Tagged biblical studies, Joseph Naveh, reseña | 2 Comments »
Canter Bridge 