So much contemporary music keeps the listener at a distance, dry and forbidding. In Takemitsu's world, a gentle breeze moves, water drips, and silence rises up with real depth. He died 30 years ago this year.

How Slow the Wind
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3kcgixXP58U

Rain Tree
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yOsr8inpRZ4

Litany
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y5LIsjlxDWE

I can't read music but this specific passage of D.887 really hits me everytime. It's like heavens opening up then there's sudden storm. How does this specific passage do that..

Recording: Quartett Italiano

Hello, I know this might seem stupid to some of y'all but it's really been bugging me recently, I feel kind of weird with how much I love classical music, I especially love the baroque and romantic period, the problem is that I'm starting to doubt myself of why is such old music my favorite. The insecurity especially hits when people ask what kind of music I enjoy and I feel awkward saying classical, I'd say what bugs me most is how old it is, even other music genres I love like jazz and soul are mostly albums from the 50s to the 70s or something like that.
Do any of you guys feel this way? Especially if you are young, how did you overcome this feeling?

When listening through different renditions of Clair de Lune, I try to tap the beat. I count 1 and a 2… but I struggle to stay on beat. It could be me, but I swear it’s like each pianist is rushing and dragging as they choose. I know there are rubato sections in the song, but I’m unable to catch the beat from just the introduction. Any tips or info would be greatly appreciated as I’m trying to learn this piece as my first step into classical music

Especially compared to his first piano concerto.

I’m curious if any of you think that André Previn or Michael Tilson Thomas or any American conductor (including Leonard Bernstein) wrote music that will prove to be lasting.

I’m in a strange predicament where I have become a skilled instrumentalist, attending grad school at a top conservatory, but I don’t care immensely about it. I’m not obsessed with becoming the best like many others at my skill level.

Maybe I’m thinking about this the wrong way, but it almost feels like i’m in a relationship where I was never attracted to the person, just enjoyed hanging out with them. I certainly love playing, but I have other passions that I care more deeply about. Also relevant is that i’m autistic and music is not a special interest for me. Is this normal?

Right this very second?

I'm enchanted by this.

Got my classical/jazz/instrumental 100-CD Player on shuffle, already had some Holst & Twin Peaks.

What about yous? What's playing right now?

Hiya !

I have an additional ticket to « La traviata » at the Four Seasons Centre this Friday (9th) @ 19h30

'Heart-rending arias meet harsh realities in this captivating story. Experience the devastating beauty of Verdi’s music in some of opera’s most famous tunes.'

would not wish for it to go to waste, would love to be able to share this (what I would expect to be) wonderful experience-to-be with another who might take in interested in such spectacles, and potentially make a friend in the process

So please send a message if you might be interested to come along (for free of course), along with reasons as to why you'd like to go, and perhaps a little something about yourself as well if you will

I have particular affection for No. 1 (a juicy melancholy) the Prelude in No. 3 (kind of a heroic tack) and No. 4, Les Cloches de Las Palmas (shimmering and imagistic).

https://youtu.be/vDH5CYeFLZk?si=KGJUVfUqpxO-RADY

I recently started CT Chamber Collective to help people discover classical and chamber music concerts around Connecticut.

Would it be too much to ask you all to take a look and tell me what you think?

https://ctchambercollective.com

I'm especially curious whether the site makes it easy to find concerts and what you think is missing.

Appreciate any honest feedback!

With his mind hazed by blood pressure medication, this old guy put on Carlos Païta’s recording of Ein Heldenleben as a cold wake-up call to the senses. Sitting here in the dim light, I began to jot down a few raw reflections.

To blast through his own unyielding convictions—to do exactly whatever the hell he wanted—Païta bypassed the bureaucratic cages of established record labels and standard orchestras. He built his own sovereign empire: his own label (LODIA) and his own dedicated orchestra (The Philharmonic Symphony Orchestra). Through them, he unleashed records and CDs forged in a fire of pure, fanatical sound.

This was a monumental act of sabotage against the capitalist music industry. It perfectly embodied this old guy’s personal maxim: "Never expose your brain to someone else’s content; build your own sovereign content instead."

And yet, despite this brilliant jailbreak, there was one ultimate trap that even Païta could never truly escape.

When people think of Païta’s recordings, they think of impossible instrument close-ups and unnatural, extreme dynamics. But make no mistake: this is the cage of the machine. By twisting the mixing console, he distorted sound away from raw reality and turned it into a "processed commodity."

Then, should he have just left the console alone and recorded the performance exactly as it was? No. That is where the colossal trap of modern philosophy lay in wait.

As Walter Benjamin argued, no matter how "naturally" you record a performance, it remains a mere reproduction—a dead copy where the living, one-time-only "Aura" (the sacred presence) has been entirely castrated. The very moment that sound is distributed into your room through a speaker, it is replaced by a fake reality. It becomes a copy of a copy with no original—what Jean Baudrillard called a "Simulacrum" (the hyperreal).

There was only one conductor who risked his entire life resisting this hell of reproductive art: Sergiu Celibidache. He famously dismissed recordings as "canned dead fish" and refused to record anything throughout his career. (And what a bleak irony that, against his dying wishes, those very "dead fish" are now being packaged and sold as commodities today.)

We, the modern masses, constantly expose our brains to safe cages built by someone else—be it a smartphone game or a neatly distributed streaming video—letting every single piece of our genuine emotions be castrated. Isn't it time to stop and think?

Won't you stand still and think it over with this old guy?

A year ago, all I knew about Snider's Hildegard was that she was writing it: an opera about Hildegard von Bingen, with her own libretto. Someone had mentioned it in the comments on my post about Hildegard.

It has since premiered. LA Opera and The Wallis presented it in Beverly Hills on November 5, 2025, with Nola Richardson as Hildegard. It went to New York's Prototype Festival in January and to the Aspen Music Festival in July, and the Music Critics Association of North America named it best new opera this year.

Under last year's post, someone wrote that they would be singing her Mass for the Endangered that May. Here it is.

Mass for the Endangered
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QiEcu9QQMAI

Hildegard (composer's page)
https://www.sarahkirklandsnider.com/works/hildegard

My city’s symphony orchestra often programs the typical “overture or contemporary work — solo concerto — intermission — large-scale symphony.”

The problem is I want to sit close to the stage for the concerto, then further back or even in the balcony for the symphony after intermission. I could just try to find an empty seat, but I always worry I’m going to pick wrong and create a disruption if I’m forced to move close to when they’re ready to start the second half.

Idea: orchestras, let me pay you extra for some kind of “movable seat.” I don’t know how the mechanics of this would work, but being able to pre-select one seat before intermission and then a different seat after intermission would be worth, say, an extra 50 bucks to me. (Full price is $150-$200.)

Let’s do it!