Tag Archives: Tone Poem Tuesday

French composer Charles Gounod is probably the closest thing Hector Berlioz had to a successor in the musical world; Berlioz was too much the iconoclast to really found a “school” of composition reflective of his own thought. Gounod, however, counted … Continue reading →

NPR has a podcast called the Open Ears Project: Part mix tape, part sonic love-letter, the Open Ears Project is a daily podcast where people share the classical track that means the most to them. Each episode offers a soulful … Continue reading →

We are currently entertaining a visit from my brother-in-law, so posting will likely be light here until the weekend. That being the case, it’s time for Franz von Suppe! Here is the Poet and Peasant Overture.

A work today by composer Nina Shekhar. The work is called Lumina, and rather than me introducing it, I’ll let the composer herself do it: And here is Lumina. This is a fascinating listen! I found this piece suggested in … Continue reading →

When in doubt, go with Berlioz. You can’t go wrong with Berlioz. Here is the Roman Carnival overture, for which Berlioz re-tooled a number of melodies from his first opera, Benvenuto Cellini, which–like many of Berlioz’s works during his lifetime, sadly–failed in its … Continue reading →

Whoops, it is Tuesday, isn’t it? Welp! Some Borodin, then: Well, before I get to that, background: the Polovtsian Dances are one of Borodin’s most famous works. It is, in fact, an excerpt from his opera Prince Igor. The opera itself hasn’t endured … Continue reading →

Today, a rarity: or something that felt to me like a rarity many years ago, when I was still playing the trumpet (and, I might add, at a pretty high level!). The evolution of the trumpet as an instrument meant … Continue reading →

One of Leonard Bernstein’s main self-appointed missions in life was the advancement of new American music. As comfortable as he was in the orchestral repertoire all the way back to Mozart, Bernstein saw it as his duty to stand up … Continue reading →

Reinhold Gliere was a Russian composer who lived long enough to stop being a Russian composer and become a Soviet one. He was born in 1875 and lived to 1956, almost exactly contemporary with Joseph Stalin. As the last living … Continue reading →