Blog 15. Tchaikovsky Ballets II – Sleeping Beauty and Nutcracker
The second of Tchaikovsky’s three great ballets is Sleeping Beauty. Like the other two, it was choreographed by Marius Petipa of the Imperial Ballet, later…
EMI
Blog 14. Tchaikovsky – Ballets I – Swan Lake
The next two blogs are about Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky and his three most famous ballets, Swan Lake, Sleeping Beauty, and the Nutcracker. This blog will…
Blog 10. Beethoven’s Concerti I – The Violin Concerto
Ludwig van Beethoven spent most of his most productive compositional life battling a slow losing battle with deafness. He was an iconoclast of the first…
Blog 9. Brahms Concerti II – The Two Piano Concerti
Brahms was a fine pianist, and his piano compositions are among the finest in the literature. His two piano concerti are among the most popular…
Blog 8. Brahms Concerti I – Violin and Double Concerti
Johannes Brahms is the third B – with Bach and Beethoven. He also is the least known and probably the least admired. I certainly felt…
Blog 5. Puccini – Madame Butterfly
For his librettist for Madama Butterfly, Puccini chose the team of Illica and Giacosa, the same librettists who wrote La Boheme. It joins Boheme and…
Blog 4. Puccini – Tosca “that shabby little shocker”
The famed critic and music pedant Joseph Kerman coined “that shabby little shocker” phrase for Tosca in his book “Opera as Drama”, a book I…