Editorial Product Review: :A superb crossover title of enormous appeal to the vast selection of the population that enjoys classical music, but would like to know more about it. From Gregorian Chant to Henryk Gorecki, the first living classical composer to get into the pop album charts, here is the fascinating story of over a thousand years of Western classical music and the composers who have sought to express in music the deepest of human feelings and emotions. Polyphony, sonata form, serial music - many musical expressions are also explained - with the text ...
Editorial Product Review: :A superb crossover title of enormous appeal to the vast selection of the population that enjoys classical music, but would like to know more about it. From Gregorian Chant to Henryk Gorecki, the first living classical composer to get into the pop album charts, here is the fascinating story of over a thousand years of Western classical music and the composers who have sought to express in music the deepest of human feelings and emotions. Polyphony, sonata form, serial music - many musical expressions are also explained - with the text ...
Editorial Product Review: essential recording:Herbert von Karajan undoubtedly wished to be remembered as this century's great German conductor. He recorded the complete Beethoven symphonies four times, Brahms twice, Bruckner almost twice. But in truth, he was better at other things, and when he worked outside his standard repertory he usually did his best work--like here, for instance. Von Karajan actually recorded this symphony once before, a good performance. But when he returned to it for a digital retread, he simply let himself go and played the pants off the piece. This performance reveals his ...
Editorial Product Review: essential recording:Herbert von Karajan undoubtedly wished to be remembered as this century's great German conductor. He recorded the complete Beethoven symphonies four times, Brahms twice, Bruckner almost twice. But in truth, he was better at other things, and when he worked outside his standard repertory he usually did his best work--like here, for instance. Von Karajan actually recorded this symphony once before, a good performance. But when he returned to it for a digital retread, he simply let himself go and played the pants off the piece. This performance reveals his ...
Editorial Product Review: essential recording:Ives never really intended his four holiday symphonic poems to be played together, and they are very seldom performed that way live. But it makes so much sense to group them on a recording that the Holidays Symphony has become the standard way to refer to the music. In any event, all four pieces offer some of Ives'ss finest, most imaginative work. The Fourth of July is the second most complex and crazy piece that he ever wrote--right up there with the second movement of the Fourth Symphony. Tilson Thomas ...
Editorial Product Review:Album Description:Simon Rattle conducts Stravinsky Recorded Live in September 2007. The album comprises three of the five works by Stravinsky which contain the word `symphony' in their titles, including the Symphony in C which Sir Simon has never before performed and which the BPO haven't played for over 20 years. EMI. 2008.
Editorial Product Review: :These are two of Vaughan Williams's greatest symphonies. (Some think his Fifth is his best.) The Third Symphony (1922), subtitled 'The Pastoral Symphony,' brings to mind the lush imagery of the English countryside and is filled with heartbreaking melodies. (It was written in part while the composer was in the service in WWI.) His Fifth Symphony (1943) is an outgrowth of the music from his great opera, The Pilgrim's Progress, eventually published in 1951. In part, the symphony is a return to his warmer style, a turn away from the acerbic Fourth ...
Editorial Product Review: :These are two of Vaughan Williams's greatest symphonies. (Some think his Fifth is his best.) The Third Symphony (1922), subtitled 'The Pastoral Symphony,' brings to mind the lush imagery of the English countryside and is filled with heartbreaking melodies. (It was written in part while the composer was in the service in WWI.) His Fifth Symphony (1943) is an outgrowth of the music from his great opera, The Pilgrim's Progress, eventually published in 1951. In part, the symphony is a return to his warmer style, a turn away from the acerbic Fourth ...
Editorial Product Review: :Aaron Copland made numerous recordings of his own music, including an extensive series for CBS during the 1960s and '70s, mostly with London orchestras. He was not an especially proficient conductor--consequently, the performances he conducted often lacked pace and rhythmic punch. His last recordings of his most popular scores have been reissued by Sony on an exceptionally well-remastered 3-CD set. These accounts do a good job of conveying the overall shape of the pieces, and they deliver telling characterizations of many episodes. Details emerge that are lost in some other accounts, and ...
Usually we're fans of Logitech's gaming mice, but its highest-end G9 Laser Mouse is expensive, overly complex, and lacks the ergonomic thought we've come to expect. If you like to brag about dot-per-inch limits, perhaps the G9's 3,200dpi laser will be enough to sell you, but for the price, we expect the design to match.
Small and light enough for a shirt pocket, Samsung's Helix YX-M1 is a one-stop audio entertainment center with an XM radio, a digital music player, and room for 50 hours of tunes, but it comes up short on battery life.