Recent content by stlukesguild

I just saw this post, Brian. I quite like what work was shown in the article.

Sometimes Bruckner can feel dense (like Brahms, eh Brian? 😆). This Karajan recording with the Berlin Philharmonic (not the later recording with the Vienna Philharmonic) conveys a luminosity and sensuality not unlike Karajan’s recording of Wagner’s Tristan und Isolde. It’s not surprising that...

I woke up this morning to a good steady snowfall… and at 6:00 AM they announced: SNOW DAY!!!

Like Shostakovich, Schedrin composed under the rule of the Soviets and the notion that everything… certainly all Art… was political. Schedrin’s most famous composition was his Carmen Suite which built upon the music of Bizet’s Carmen as well as his Arlésienne music and music from his opera La...

It’s a crappy reproduction… but the only one I could find. Scelsi is another composer that might be up Hermes’ alley. Scelsi, Tristan Murail, and Takemitsu are both seen as major composers of “spectral” music. The music is often modal… based around a single tone… and in some ways might be seen...

Back when Brian & I used to frequent this Classical Music forum there was one older member who was profoundly knowledgeable of older performers and recordings. As I was building my classical music collection at the time and was open to suggestions for older performers and recordings, I listened...

And then after Christmas I'll settle into reading more of my Steinbeck collection. I've read them all multiple times but he's by far my favorite author ever. I’ve long had mixed feelings about Steinbeck. Perhaps it is because he was one of the writers hoisted on us most in grade school. Of...

Kafka is a writer who did not immediately resonate with me. He is often deemed a Surrealist but his writing does not have the more sensual/“romantic” aspects I was expecting. His writing is much more dead-pan… even journalistic. In spite of not being immediately seduced as I was by other...

Hermes, yes… there are those artists who I love profoundly… but they do not inspire my own art. In some instances, there are artists who a recognize as being far more minor figures who nevertheless have the most profound influence on my own work. Picasso is an artist whose work I recognize as...

Some contemporary “gothic” or dark tales. I’ll see how I like this. J.S. Le Fanu… and of course, Coleridge were both so masterful in their use of a rich, sensuous language that I could not help but recognize just what a waste reading social media is. So many of our students have stunted their...

Of course the connection with Rilke would interest me.

We are having friends over for our own belated Thanksgiving meal. We just now stuffed the turkey into the oven.

Having finished J.S. Le Fanu’s Carmilla… a precursor to Bram Stoker’s Dracula… I’m now returning to Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s Cristabel… which was itself a precursor to Carmilla.

I just finished J.S. Le Fanu’s Carmilla, a precursor to Bram Stoker’s Dracula.

Today I’m taking it easy… listening to music and reading. After Thanksgiving dinner with the younger daughter last evening, it took me over an hour to drive home. It was snowing like crazy and no snowplows were out. None of the roads had been salted or de-iced… and half of the drivers clearly...