Passionate symphony lover. Other music is good too.
Mr. Symphonist
Much as I like Pride & Prejudice I find it impossible to deny that this is the greatest review of it of all time
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Happy 75th birthday to rock musician, arranger and film score composer James Newton Howard.
From Elton John to Barbra Streisand.
PRETTY WOMAN to THE HUNGER GAMES
His career has been both long and noteworthy.
A versatile, gifted composer and musician.
1/9
#filmsky #moviesky #musicsky #BOTD
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"Hugely impressive" - Edward Seckerson
"Atrocious" - David Hurwitz
Who's right? Let's see.
#NowListening #NewReleases2026 #109
Because of this, not all recordings and performances present the sequence in the published order, but the accounts on my Youtube and Qobuz playlists both do. Find them here š§µš½
#TheCompleteBritten #112
A.M.D.G. for unaccompanied chorus (1939)
1 Prayer I
2 Rosa mystica
3 Godās grandeur
4 Prayer II
5 O Deus, eg amo te
6 The soldier
7 Heaven-haven
Seven seriously challenging Gerard Manley Hopkins settings. A.M.D.G. = Ad maiorem Dei gloriam (to the greater glory of God).
Happy 161st birth anniversary to great Danish symphonist Carl Nielsen, born #OnThisDay in 1865. Here's his glorious Symphony No. 3 under the Inextinguishable Herbert Blomstedt (still conducting at age 98). Stick this on as loud as your nieghbours can stand to get your day off to an expansive start!
Happy 161st birth anniversary to great Danish symphonist Carl Nielsen, born #OnThisDay in 1865. Here's his glorious Symphony No. 3 under the Inextinguishable Herbert Blomstedt (still conducting at age 98). Stick this on as loud as your nieghbours can stand to get your day off to an expansive start!
He'd just arrived in Canada with Peter Pears and, as you can hear from the bravura piano part and unrestrained string writing, he hit the Canadian ground running. He withdrew the piece, possibly at Pears' insistence, and it wasn't heard again until 1979.
Find it on my Youtube & Qobuz playlists š½
#TheCompleteBritten #111
Young Apollo, Op.16 (1939)
Britten knocked out this flamboyant 'fanfare for piano, string quartet & string orchestra' for the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation while also at work on the Violin Concerto and Les Illuminations. Its ecstatic high spirits are downright sexy!
2026 marks the 50th anniversary of the death of Benjamin Britten (1913-1976). Peter Grimes, the Serenade and War Requiem are among my all time favourite works. This year I'm going to try to listen to every Britten piece, in the order he wrote them. Why not join me? #TheCompleteBritten
Written to be sung in London by singers including Peter Pears. If I'd written this glorious music, I'd do anything to get it published, but when war broke out with Britten & Pears in Canada, he set these spectacular choral songs aside. Finally published in 1984, the intended order wasn't clear.
2026 marks the 50th anniversary of the death of Benjamin Britten (1913-1976). Peter Grimes, the Serenade and War Requiem are among my all time favourite works. This year I'm going to try to listen to every Britten piece, in the order he wrote them. Why not join me? #TheCompleteBritten
