Last month the Classics a Day team chose vintage recordings as the theme. Specifically, recordings made before the LP era. This month, the focus moves forward in time a little, to the early LP era. This runs from 1948 to about 1958, with the advent of stereo recording. In that era (as with other eras […]
Bela Bartok
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Formosa Quartet sample Hungary and Taiwan (sort of)
I really like the selections on this album and the performances. The premise? Not so much. The liner notes state that the quartet wants to explore cultural and geographic diversity. “In this recording, we begin to focus on two of these regions [of the world] by bringing you music born of Hungarian and Taiwanese soil […]
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Charlottesville Symphony Thrill with Bartok and Mendelssohn
Bela Bartok’s Violin Concerto No. 2 is a challenging work for both soloist and ensemble. Audiences were treated to a fine performance by violinist Joseph Lin, maestro Benjamin Rous, and the Charlottesville Symphony March 23 and 24th, 2019. Lin possessed all the technical ability necessary for this difficult piece. He played with a clean, pure […]
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#ClassicsaDay #FamousLastWorks Week 2
For the month of October, the #ClassicsaDay team (of which I’m a part), decided to go with a Halloween theme. The idea is to share works marked in some way with the composer’s demise. It can be the last piece a composer completed before death, or one left incomplete at death. For my part, I […]
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#ClassicsaDay #Bernsteinat100 Week 5
August 2018 is the centennial of Leonard Bernstein’s birth. Many classical radio stations, performance groups, and writers marked the occasion. And so did #ClassicsaDay. Bernstein was known as a composer, conductor, performer and an educator. Since #ClassicsaDay is primarily a music feed, I concentrated on the first two of those roles (and occasionally the third). […]
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Falletta and Buffalo Philharmonic Excel with Early Bartok
A young Bela Bartók wrote he was “roused as by a clap of thunder at the first performance of Also sprach Zarathustra.. The work brought me to a pitch of enthusiasm. I felt a reaching out to something new. I threw myself into the study of Strauss.” That inspiration is quite evident in this collection […]
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Martin Perry plays Carter, Bartók, Rózsa
Martin Perry presents works by three composers that aren’t often grouped together: Bela Bartok, Mikos Rózsa, and Elliot Carter. And yet the three works on this disc form a cohesive and intriguing program. Bartok used folk songs as the basis for his Improvisations on Hungarian Peasant Songs, Op. 20. But as the title suggests, he […]