Deaf Center – Pale Ravine
While there really isn’t a perfect album since it just depends on the mood your in, it’s very difficult to find a time or place I don’t love listening to Deaf Center’s 2005 release Pale Ravine. The ‘Modern Classical’ term gets thrown around a lot these days. Pale Ravine deserves it’s own genre, it’s that...
Sviatoslav Richter – Rachmaninov’s Piano Concerto No.1
It’s true what they say about composers with big hands; they have big concertos. Russian composer Sergei Rachmaninov’s four piano concertos are about as big as they come – epic themes, sweeping Russian melodies and a pianistic virtuosity equal to the composer’s own skill at the piano. That said, his Piano Concerto No. 1 is...
Ethno-Musicology: The Music of Béla Bartók
There’s nothing new about mining Balkan states for musical inspiration. Combing his way through the Balkan states and getting as far east as Turkey, the classical composer Béla Bartók found his verve recording folk melodies in rural regions. With an output that is richly recorded on a number of LPs, the music his research compelled...
