Category Archives: music

Daniel Barenboim, Mozart Piano Sonata No. 7, K 309

1st move­ment: Alle­gro con spir­ito | 2nd: Andante un poco Ada­gio | 3rd: Rondo alle­gretto grazioso Not much to say — this and Piano Sonata No. 11 have been recent addic­tions of mine. Barenboim’s dynam­ics are clearer in this record­ing than in No. 11, and that mat­ters quite a bit in the sec­ond move­ment espe­cially,

Martha Argerich, Beethoven Piano Sonata Op. 101

Martha Arg­erich, Beethoven Piano Sonata Op. 101: First Move­ment | Sec­ond | Third | Fourth The vol­ume has to be increased con­sid­er­ably to hear every­thing going on in these record­ings. Arg­erich gets very quiet numer­ous times, espe­cially when play­ing a phrase that repeats and needs to be made dis­tinct dynam­i­cally. I con­fess that this is

Miley Cyrus, “Can’t be Tamed”

Lyrics, Song I’ve been watch­ing VH1 and MTV mainly to have music videos in the back­ground on when I work — I’m up really late or some­times really early, it depends. Every time this song comes on, I’m about to mute it, except that I’ll hear some­thing that just sounds like it makes absolutely no

The Passion of Politics: “Pamphleteer,” The Weakerthans

Pam­phle­teer (from theweakerthans.org; song avail­able here) The Weak­erthans I’m stand­ing on this cor­ner can’t get their atten­tion fac­ing rush hour faces turned around. I clutch my stack of paper, press one to a chest, then watch it swoop and stut­ter to the ground. I’m weary with right-angles, abbre­vi­ated day­light, wait­ing for a win­ter to be done.

We give a lot. But giving well might be a lost art.

I just read in the New York Times about a pianist who received a most unusual award (the excerpts on the site are amaz­ing, par­tic­u­larly the Bach): The award, which will offi­cially be announced on Thurs­day morn­ing, is music’s answer to the MacArthur Foun­da­tion “genius” grants. And it is some­thing of an anti-Van Cliburn Com­pe­ti­tion, a