Author: Bill Dodd

Now available for 25% Off I was in my mid-teens when I first became aware of the music of Jean Sibelius– Finlandia, the Second Symphony– the usual. I eventually started listening to his other symphonies, and I was hooked. The Fifth Symphony became my favorite. Many years later I came across a used LP featuring […]

You know the question– If you could only have one (whatever) on a desert island, what would it be. Desert Island Favorites can sometimes produce some interesting results. I was thinking a while back about what my desert island favorite tone poems might be. I came up with two: Rachmaninoff’s Isle Of the Dead, and Richard Strauss’ […]

Now Available for 25% Off! Chiaroscuro (Italian for light-dark) in art is the use of strong contrasts between light and dark, usually bold contrasts affecting a whole composition. It is also a technical term used by artists and art historians for the use of contrasts of light to achieve a sense of volume in modeling […]

Available Now for 25% Off! Entrancing! Ricardo Gallen is one of the most talented and respected classical guitarists in the world. Those of you who are fans will probably have already grabbed this album. It’s made up of works from the composer whose name is synonymous with Brazilian concert music, Heitor Villa-Lobos (1887-1959); and Colloquial Preludes, by […]

Gabor Hollerung conducts the Budafok Dohnanyi Orchestra, The Budapest Academic Choral Society, and 4 marvelous soloists in the Carmina Burana cantata, composed in 1935 and 1936 by Carl Orff, and based on 24 poems from the medieval collection Carmina Burana. It’s sung in Latin, as well as Middle High German. Even if you are not […]

You may have overlooked this one- I did! But that’s the reason I do these “Discoveries”. It’s an LP length release from an orchestra you might not have heard of, and you probably have more than one recording of Stravinsky’s Petrushka already. So imagine my surprise at finding this performance absolutely delightful! The late 50s […]

Xiaowen Shang’s debut album is a delightful program featuring a number of individual selections from Federico Mompou’s Musica Callada, interspersed with some of Antonio Soler’s eighteenth-century sonatas, and piano transcriptions of the sixteenth-century sacred composer Antonio de Cabézon- 3 centuries of Spanish music that she brings together flawlessly. She plays with crystal clarity, yet never […]

Want some fresh Dvorak? Tomas Netopil and the Czech Philharmonic serve up a delightful array of some of Dvorak’s lesser-known works on this release from a few weeks ago. They may not be as well known as his Slavonic Dances and others, but that doesn’t mean they are in any way inferior. The Legends are […]

It should come as no surprise that many of us in my part of the world are a bit tense these days, and I am no exception. Just a couple of weeks ago I was ready to pull my hair out and run screaming into the streets! But that’s when I decided to put on a […]

I got hooked on Miklos Rozsa’s music as a high school kid, when I saw Ben Hur in a newly-remodeled theater in it’s first “roadshow” run. The Sound system in that theater was excellent, and I was blown away. I played the soundtrack album so often I imagine I was driving my parents crazy! I […]

The Melbourne Symphony Orchestra debuts its own label with these two releases. I was thoroughly impressed by each one, and I want to be sure that they get the attention they deserve. First, Australian soprano Siobhan Stagg and the MSO’s chief conductor, Jaime Martin in song suites by Debussy and Strauss. Ariettes Oublidees, the Debussy songs […]

Available now for 25% Off! If you’re not a big fan of Baroque Music, I’ve got the perfect “discovery” for you… Barbaric Beauty! At least, this is how Telemann described the pieces he wrote after discovering the music played along the Polish-Hungarian border. “If you were to write down all that was played there, after […]