Albums

AMERICAN QUARTET; AMERICAN ENSEMBLE: OH, BEAUTIFUL! Dvořák’s American Quartet is one of the most famous and loved string quartets, mostly because of the memorable pentatonic melodies (five note per octave scales, which are often found in American folk music) that invoke the wide open prairies of the undeveloped heartland of the country for which it’s…

THE MUSICAL THAT KEEPS ON WORKING Was 2017 really the European premiere of this oft-produced musical? Yep. 40 years since the Broadway opening of Working, and we’re just getting the Original London Cast recording. Stephen Schwartz and Nina Faso’s 1978 musical —  adapted from Studs Terkel’s 1974 nonfiction book about working-class Americans – moves between monologues…

THE FUCHS, THE PROUD, THE MINGUET When Robert Fuchs died in 1927, just a few days after his 80th birthday, he was already a forgotten figure. He had been a friend of Brahms, who praised his music warmly, and he had taught a whole generation of composers including Sibelius, Mahler, Wolf, Zemlinsky, Schmidt and Schreker….

DREAMY PERFEKTION I have seen the charismatic German baritone Max Raabe and his 12-member Palast Orchester live three times; each time, the world-famous group — around since the mid-80s — embodies the high style and musical glory of the ‘20s and ‘30s as they perform songs from, and in the style of, that remarkable time….

FALTERED AT HIS POST The best thing I can say about John Williams’ score to The Post is that I don’t remember a thing about it after watching the movie, which means it supported the mood perfectly. Recently released on Sony Classical, the CD of the score is an entirely different matter — not that…

MARVIN’S GARDEN One of composer Marvin Hamlisch’s first gigs was that of rehearsal pianist and assistant vocal arranger for the original production of Funny Girl on Broadway in 1964, a job which he found through the aid of Liza Minnelli, who recorded one of Hamlisch’s early songs (“Travelin’ Man”) on her first album. It was…

DRAWING A BLANK Coming direct from the Missed Opportunity Department is a semi-educational musical geared towards kids and prepubescent audiences which ends up as merely juvenile. Mad Libs Live! is an hour-long show about four high-school teens who, as a team, enter a singing group competition. The prize? The title of “Teen Superstars.” The modus…

A DARK HOUR FOR FILM SCORES There are film scores which multiply suspense, doing the job quite well for the film, but not transportive to someone merely listening. In the case of Darkest Hour —  Joe Wright’s film about Winston Churchill and the early days of  his Prime Ministership, when Hitler was closing in on Britain during…

NORDIC NOIR: STORIES TO FJí„LLBACKA These three Swedish murder mysteries by the best selling Camilla Låckberg are a mixed lot, but still worth a visit. Born in 1974, the í¼ber-successful author has seen her stories filmed quite a bit for television, with all of her mysteries set in the Swedish town of Fjållbacka and nearby…

A CAPITOL IDEA I got a chance to catch Seth MacFarlane with orchestra at Segerstrom Concert Hall in Costa Mesa last night, and it’s clear that this handsome, dapper, multi-talented artist isn’t just making his fan base happy, he’s making both the lovers of the Great American Songbook and the musicians in the band very…

KILLER NOVA EPISODE A thoroughly engrossing documentary on how extreme volcanoes can – and do — influence global climate change, specifically in adding sulfuric acid and ash into clouds which the winds blow everywhere, causing temperatures to drop, for months or years at a time. The producers wanted to find out how a thirteenth-century English…

OOH-LA-LA Five thousand years of Parisian history is beautifully explored in this two-disc French-produced journey with English narration. The City of Light was originally a small Gallo-Roman village next to the river Seine and near the river Marne, named Lutetia-Parisorum after the tribe known as the Gallic Parisii, and was renamed Paris in 360 CE…

YOU CAN’T TOP PIGS WITH PIGS After  The Three Little Pigs‘ runaway success in 1933, Walt Disney attempted a few more shorts starring the little porkers, but they weren’t as good, which led to one of the genius’s most memorable and telling quotes:  “You can’t top pigs with pigs” — meaning sequels should be avoided. After the…