Listening
John Field: One-Trick Pony or Original Precursor to the Romantics?
Apart from the occasional handful of popular nocturnes peppered in an otherwise ‘traditional’ concert program, it’s a very rare occurrence to see a piece by John Field offered up to the audience at a piano recital, let alone any other type of concert.
Listening online
This post addresses a topic that I’ve hoped to write about for a while: resources for listening to classical music online. I’m planning to stick to resources that are free (no iTunes) and accessible to anyone (no Naxos/Classical Music Library) as well as not potentially infringing on copyright (YouTube). For this post, I will discuss three of my favorites and welcome you to submit others. I’d like to investigate other possibilities for listening online, so please feel free to comment and leave more suggestions.
Five contemporary orchestra pieces you have to know
You all know that I am a big fan of lists. Today I am sharing with you five of my most favorite orchestra pieces. Let me know how your list would look like!
DJ Dubble8 at alonetone.com
I just came across this 50-tracks anthology of free downloads from DJ Dubble 8 aka Erik Spangler, who is one of the two curators of Mobtown Modern. It is hosted on alonetone.com, a new music service that lets you host and share your music across the internet. Here is a short “prelisten” for you:
Taking Time to Listen
This week, a close friend of mine emailed me in a panic: she is getting married in two weeks and needed some suggestions for repertoire that could be played during the ceremony. She has hired a solo cellist and so I thought of the Bach Suites, which are not only enjoyable to the ears, but can be lengthened or shortened as required by omitting/taking repeats — necessary for any good wedding piece. She wanted to hear examples and I created a list for her on YouTube, where there are numerous performances by Mstislav Rostropovich of the Suites. There are worse ways of spending an evening and I wound up listening to many of the available clips even after sending her my suggestions.
We are listening to Istanbul
Istanbul is going to be European Capital of Culture in 2010 and in preparation of the big festivities zeitschichten.com is going to explore with you the New Music scene of Europe’s largest city. Over the next year or so we will introduce you to some of the most exiting new music that is being composed, improvised, and performed in Istanbul today.
Essential listening – Part 1: Up to ca. 1500
One of my American friends asked me for a list of listening recommendations. She would like to get involved more with music and was wondering what the most essential pieces in the canon are. The idea was to come up with a list of approximately thirty titles which she could listen to and get to know a bit better over the period of a year or so. Here is the first part of my list. It contains music that was composed up to ca. 1500.
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