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Professor Carl Sagan understood that to communicate our greatest thoughts, one needed music. In it, logic and beauty can become singular, inseparable. The…
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Respighi reworked a few of Rossini's piano pieces to create the whimsical La Boutique Fantasque, a ballet set in a magical toyshop. Here, a dollmaker…
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Bizet's Roma is a confusing piece of music to discuss. Originally conceived as a symphony, it is often considered to be a suite for orchestra (which is…
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Jean Sibelius's later works, his Seventh Symphony, Tapiola, and, today's featured piece, incidental music for The Tempest, are masterworks. The orchestral…
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Perhaps for its depth of feeling or simply for its being a requiem, there is a certain surprise to find that Faure said, "My Requiem was composed for…
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Mozart's purpose for writing the Serenade in D, K 203, is up for debate. Either it was written for his patron's name day, or it was written for a…
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As the Tchaikovsky Competition is now smack dab in the middle of its final round, we thought it fitting to play the recording made of Van Cliburn at…
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Young Beethoven had applied to and been accepted by Mozart as a pupil, but B learned of his mother's impending death on his way to join M, so the two…
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Written between Verdi's Aida and Otello, the Four Sacred Pieces were the pursuits of a retiree. Each composed at leisure and without the thought of a…
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Yesterday we played Beethoven's Third, the work that more than any other established the modern idea of Symphony. Today we hear Bruckner's First (Linz…