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About Classical Music
Four years ago, the classical music publishing giant, Gramophone, created a list ranking twenty of the world's best orchestras. That list has garnered many reactions, both positive and negative, from classical music fans from around the world. Many orchestras were missing from the list, while others were ranked incorrectly - or at least that's how many people felt. I'm curious to know what you think. After you read the list of the world's best symphony orchestras, share your opinions or your ideal rankings.
World's Best Symphony Orchestras originally appeared on About.com Classical Music on Sunday, February 5th, 2012 at 22:43:45.
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About Classical Music
About Classical Music
About Classical Music
About Classical Music
About Classical Music
Normally, I have trouble predicting the winner of an an award, whether it's an Oscar, Golden Globe, or Grammy. This year's winner for the Golden Globe for best film score, however, was a no-brainer. The moment I heard the music, I instantly fell in love, and I knew others would too. I didn't even need to hear the other 2012 Golden Globe nominees. If you haven't had a chance to listen to Ludovic Bource's The Artist, you simply must. You can preview, purchase and download tracks at Amazon, or you can listen to one of my favorite tracks on Youtube.
2012 Golden Globe Winner for Best Score originally appeared on About.com Classical Music on Sunday, January 15th, 2012 at 23:41:46.
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About Classical Music
Mozart's famous opera, Cosi fan tutte, or "Women are like that" tells the story of two men and the faithfulness or "supposed faithfulness" of their fiancées. After making a bet with a bitter old man, the two men craft a plan to dupe their fiancées into quickly exchanging their steadfast love for other men when the two officers claim to have been sent off to war. Despite the opera's not-so-perfect view of women, it's one of Mozart's most beloved operas, and has been since its creation in 1790. Read the entire Cosi fan tutte synopsis.
Cosi fan tutte Synopsis originally appeared on About.com Classical Music on Sunday, January 15th, 2012 at 01:15:27.
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About Classical Music
Last week, during a moving performance of Mahler's Symphony No. 9 with the New York Philharmonic, the New York Times reported a strange incident of a ringing cellphone. Sadly, these kinds of interruptions are all too common, not only during a classical music performance, but even at the movie theater. (Perhaps, it's time to move "not turning off your cellphone" to the top of the list of ways to ruin a classical music concert.) What makes this incident so unique, is that the phone began ringing during the final passages of the symphony - one's that are calm, quiet, reflective, and cathartic (the release the entire symphony builds up to), AND it came from the front row directly behind the conductor, Alan Gilbert. Normally, the phone is silenced within the first few seconds of ringing, but this phone rang and rang and rang and rang, causing the conductor to stop the entire performance until the matter was resolved. Audience members were shouting and becoming angrier by the minute. Finally, after the phone was silenced, Gilbert lead the orchestra to finish the piece. The culprit was later interviewed anonymously, giving his apologizes directly to Gilbert. After reading his statement, we should give him a pass. But next time, as my friend stated, "Turn the phone off. Better yet, leave it at home - it's not difficult. Why spend the money on a concert ticket if you can't disconnect for two hours..."
The Ringing Cellphone at the NY Phil's Performance of Mahler 9 originally appeared on About.com Classical Music on Saturday, January 14th, 2012 at 17:51:03.
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About Classical Music
Even though its first performance fell flat on its face, thanks to an audience loyal to rival composer, Giovanni Paisiello, Rossini's Barber of Seville has become one of the most famous comic operas. Its farcical story, full of disguises and deceptions and based on the play Le Barbier de Séville by Pierre Beaumarchais, tells the story of a two men wanting to marry the same woman. What makes this opera comical is that Count Almaviva, with the help of Figaro, disguises himself at least 3 or 4 times in order to win the lady's hand in marriage. Learn how the story ends by reading the Barber of Seville synopsis.
Rossini's Barber of Seville Synopsis originally appeared on About.com Classical Music on Monday, January 9th, 2012 at 00:03:20.
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Drowned in Sound - Classics
Do Make Say Think are a group to watch the world spin by to; to travel with; who provoke nothing more than the desire to reminisce but who never sink into melancholy without at least leaving you an afterthought. They’re a group who excel in documenting moments in time, and who provide those moments with a beautifully honest soundtrack brimming with hope.
Drowned in Sound - Classics
We Are The Romans is but six years old, and if current trends are anything to go by, that means that in, say, another four years this style of music will rightly achieve widespread acclaim. The fashion-core has-beens will be washed up, their wares exposed for the hollow shells that they truly are, and a new wave of bands will emerge...
Drowned in Sound - Classics
Death By Chocolate are back (and have been for a while) much to the frustration of reviewer Colin Weston...
Drowned in Sound - Classics
Discovering an artist’s back catalogue has to be one of the most rewarding things about being a music fanatic. I took this album to Switzerland with me last year. I played it on repeat for most of the five days I was there - The Wannadies is a slow burner that rewards greatly with repeat listening...
Drowned in Sound - Classics
Talk Talk don’t really seem to feature in that much musical conversations these days, an almost forgotten 80s rock band, perhaps lumped in many minds along with dinosaurs like Simple Minds, Duran Duran etc.It would be good if history remembered them not just for the hit pop-epics, but also for the much lesser known experimental work which came afterwards, of which 1988s ’Spirit of Eden’ is perhaps the best example.
Drowned in Sound - Classics
The Beekeepers are one of those long lost bands that never really got going. But although they imploded before recording their long-awaited début full-length, a re-visit to their mini-album, ‘Third Party, Fear and Theft’, reveals it to be much more than just a pale indication of what could have been.
Drowned in Sound - Classics
History will no doubt bury Geneva for their failure to conform to the trends, but both their magnificent, flawed albums will retain their vitality long after they disappear off record store shelves.
Drowned in Sound - Classics
If there was ever an album worth losing yourself in, this is it.
Drowned in Sound - Classics
Bands often fall from grace - some in an ultra-fashionable blaze of glory, some quietly decide to turn down their amps, and some simply disappear without trace. Then there’s this lot...
Drowned in Sound - Classics
No longer kissing with tongues. Sex restricted to the same headboard-banging boredom, made bearable through fantasies of fucking someone else. Conversations reduced to reciting workday chores and weather reports, old gossip and new lies; a tax-break marriage, a soul-sapping job and a body that's become a soft, saggi
Drowned in Sound - Classics
What makes a classic album? Is it the number of times it’s been played? Its influence within the music industry? Its ability to change someone’s life, in however small a way? I could go on forever at this point, but the truth is, there’s just no need. A classic album could be all or none of the above. It’s a
Drowned in Sound - Classics
One of my most vivid (and fond) memories of college was that of pissing my roommate off by playing 'Celebrity Skin' over and over again, while clumsily trying to bash out the songs on a £20 guitar. Almost five years after its release and I’m doing the exact same thing with my friends at uni, albeit with a somewh
Drowned in Sound - Classics
Rewind back to 1996. Metallica have just spent five years writing and recording the follow-up to the 2nd/3rd/4th best rock/metal album of all-time (the hugely overrated 'Metallica', alternating in frequent Kerrang! polls with 'Nevermind', 'In Utero' and, for some reason, 'Appetite
Drowned in Sound - Classics
On the surface, Jack Off Jill are a goth band. When you listen to 'Sexless Demons and Scars', however, you're in for a surprise. The musical side of JOJ is decidedly rock'n'roll, whilst the lyrical and emotional side is certainly more 'goth'. While Mr Marilyn Manson gave a helping hand with JOJ'
Drowned in Sound - Classics
A somewhat overlooked band, Stretch Princess are the English equivalent of Letters to Cleo. This CD, their self-titled first album makes a good attempt at girlpop-meets-guitars.
The band have toured with Third Eye Blind amongst others, and it shows. Stretch Princess, like tourmates Th
Drowned in Sound - Classics
The debut CD from Aimee Echo lead Human Waste Project is something not to be missed. Although primarily a metal CD, Echo has confessed E-Lux is comprised of "love songs, really!" and to all extents and purposes, it shows. Hauntingly sung melodies backed with the instrumental side
of HWP creates the perfect
Drowned in Sound - Classics
I am a FAN. This band are ace, and there is no doubt in my mind that with the right place/right time interface, they could clean up everywhere.
This album is the culmination of months of hibernation in their studio, honing the shimmering retro sounds of Duran Duran and early Blur. At first listen, i
Drowned in Sound - Classics
He came into the old assembly hall where we were rehearsing, sneering at our clanging, trebly racket and faux-Pavement-isms. He was in the year above, wore a pair of sleek, black smoking shoes and, by and large, thought he was as hip as anyone in the school. This was band practise; serious business for a stra
Drowned in Sound - Classics
This review is not going to be objective. It is an exercise for me to justify my feelings that Silver Jews are the most wonderful band ever. That’s right, I put a full stop. Ha. The man behind Silver Jews is David Berman, a man so mind-blowingly articulate, that half the time it is impossible to comprehen
Drowned in Sound - Classics
It’s summertime once again and with a new Silver Sun album finally on the horizon, it seems like a good opportunity to wipe the dust off their ’97 eponymous debut. Purveyor of sublime power pop to the core, songwriter James Broad cleverly side-stepped the maligned genre’s artistic boundaries to create one of the
Stories from NPR
World Cafe's 20th-anniversary celebration continues with a look back at Costello's many appearances on the show, including a conversation with collaborator Allen Toussaint about their post-Katrina tribute.
Stories from NPR
Valentine's Day only comes once a year, so you might as well take it slow. Turn down the lights and turn up this 67-song mix of soul and lovers' rock, curated by NPR Music's resident DJ, Cuzzin B.
Stories from NPR
Hoping to continue a conversation about inequality started by the Occupy Wall Street movement, a recently test-launched ad by the AFL-CIO doesn't mention unions, though. Instead it forwards the message, "Work Connects Us All."
Stories from NPR
The first big fields of stevia ever grown in the U.S. will spout this summer in California's Central Valley. One company is trying to turn this semiwild, zero-calorie plant into an industrial crop at Silicon Valley speed.
Stories from NPR
Before the recession, Idaho had one of the fastest growing economies in the country. But last year, its jobless rate peaked at nearly 10 percent. That number has begun to creep down ? but many workers in the state are still struggling to replace the jobs they've lost.
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Condoms, vaginal films, jellies, foams and sponges containing the spermicide n-9 are widely available without a doctor's prescription. N-9 can increase the risk of HIV transmission in certain cases, but many consumers don't know that.
Stories from NPR
The Grammys reward industry insiders, and Mars is no stranger to the business.
Stories from NPR
Access to emergency contraception has swirled at the center of a recent flurry of debate over insurance coverage. The most popular brand, Plan B, is a pill women can take if their birth control fails or they forget to use it. Today, about 10 percent of sexually active women say they've used Plan B.
Stories from NPR
Dr. Alex Hoffman is a billionaire genius who invented a form of artificial intelligence that predicts movements in the financial markets. When the security of his mansion is breached, though, he is thrown into a web of paranoia and violence.
Stories from NPR
Justin Rubin teaches a cycling class in Los Angeles that always gets booked up in minutes. The key to his popularity? People love his music.
Stories from NPR
Bigger US role against companies' cyberthreats?
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Obama could alter stance of federal appeals courts
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Eli's elite, for sure, after 2nd Super Bowl MVP
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Activists: Syrian troops pound Homs neighborhoods
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Patriots' loss is Super disappointment for fans
SFGate: Classical Music
The story of the French sculptor Camille Claudel is a heartbreaker by any reckoning. An artist of great gifts - perhaps even genius - she produced a slew of arresting works before a tempestuous romance with her mentor, Rodin, along with betrayal by her family...
SFGate: Classical Music
RATING: (POLITE APPLAUSE) Classical Pianist Simone Dinnerstein follows up her entrancing Bach CD from last year, "A Strange Beauty," with an effort very much in a similar vein. As before, there is a poetic epigraph - the title "Something Almost Being Said"...
SFGate: Classical Music
F. Scott Fitzgerald famously said that there are no second acts in American life - an adage that is usually cited only in order to refute it. Now "The Great Gatsby" is poised to offer the latest counterexample to the rule. Not Fitzgerald's novel itself, of...
SFGate: Classical Music
For a former music director, I would imagine that conducting your old orchestra is probably not unlike riding a bicycle. You get back on that familiar podium and everything snaps right into place as if no time had passed. That, at any rate, was the impression...
SFGate: Classical Music
It's safe to say that Trio di Clarone, which gave an enjoyable recital in Herbst Theatre on Wednesday night, is one of the only three-clarinet ensembles on the scene. So part of the pleasure in this event, presented by San Francisco Performances, lay in the...
SFGate: Classical Music
Herbert Blomstedt has seven grandchildren of his own, so he speaks with a certain authority when he compares the position of conductor laureate - which he has held with the San Francisco Symphony since the advent in 1995 of Music Director Michael Tilson...
SFGate: Classical Music
The 18th and 19th centuries were not illustrious times for the world of English music. Between the death of Henry Purcell in 1695 and the rise of Edward Elgar in the 1890s, the only composer of real achievement in England was George Frideric Handel - an...
SFGate: Classical Music
RATING: (POLITE APPLAUSE) New Music The music of composer Paul Moravec, who won the 2004 Pulitzer Prize for his vivid and dramatic "Tempest Fantasy," boasts a compelling combination of whimsy, energy and emotional openness. His writing, at least in the three...
SFGate: Classical Music
Pinchas Zukerman joined the San Francisco Symphony in Davies Symphony Hall on Thursday afternoon in a multitude of musical roles - as violinist, violist and conductor. That's a lot of hats to wear on just one head. There's no denying Zukerman's legitimate...
SFGate: Classical Music
In 2007, working on a commission from Paul Hillier's vocal quartet Theater of Voices, the composer David Lang undertook a brave and brilliant project. In an effort to decouple the pathos and emotional directness of Bach's Passion settings from their Christian...
