“Mary Poppins” – Would you rather spend two hours and 20 minutes watching this, or the same amount of time seeing Aida? Your choice. When you invite your friends to go to see an opera with you, do they whine “Okay, but how LONG will it be?” I’ve had that happen. I...

Is opera better than chamber music? Is choral music better than piano music?Those are fairly ridiculous questions, of course, but kind of interesting anyway. Much to my discredit, I’ve been thinking about them lately. And even though nobody asked me to, I came up with...

Every so often a leading musician comes along who has lavished so much love, time, and study in the work of one composer – or even in one work of music – that historic performances result. I’ve only attended a handful of performances that belong in that category. No...

Frédéric Chopin Frédéric Chopin (1810-1849) and Charles-Valentin Alkan (1813-1888) were two romantic composers who wrote extensively for the piano - so much so that they are often regarded as "piano composers." Today, I’d like to examine and compare the sonatas...

What piece of choral music is performed most often?I haven’t been able to find any statistics, but I bet that it’s a tie between Messiah by George Frideric Handel and Carmina Burana by Carl Orff. The first of those pieces reverently tells the story of the birth of...

Let’s consider three very important conductors of the war years – Richard Strauss, Herbert von Karajan and Wilhelm Furtwängler.  They all conducted before Hitler and his ghoulish leadership team, that’s not in doubt.  Yet if we consider their very different...