A visit to Salon97 would not be complete without listening recommendations! This tag is your one-stop-shop for great classical music discoveries.
As we enter a season of darker days and longer, colder nights, we look for ways to warm our souls from within. Add some wintertime joviality to your season with our winter classical playlist! It’s perfect for an evening curled up by the fire or a weekend afternoon with a good book and a warm cup of tea.
We’re a whole week into January now, but really, do those best-of lists from the end of the year ever get old? No, not really. And with the various music lists floating about, one could fuel months of listening from a comprehensive selection of genres! All thanks to the glorious best-of list.
Most of the U.S. is still waiting to thaw from a very long winter, so we put together a “Springtime Joy” playlist to help lift your spirits! Coax that snow to melt with this two-plus hour playlist full of spring music favorites. Most are happy, joyous, and light. And, of course, we included the intensely ornery Rite of Spring for good measure as well. Head on over to our Rdio page and listen! We’d also
May 29, 2013 marks the centenary of Igor Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring. Whether you love it or hate it, Rite of Spring paved the path of classical music in the 21st century. It’s a roller coaster ride of a piece, so if you are unfamiliar with it, today is a great day to give it a try! (That image above is a hat tip to Stravinsky’s Firebird Suite, by the way. Another must!) People the
The beloved Nutcracker Ballet turned 120 today. Though every town in the U.S. has fairly easy access to at least one live rendition of the seasonal ballet each year, that wasn’t always the case. The Nutcracker was a complete flop when it debuted in 1892 and did not gain its current popularity until the mid 1960s. We’re fortunate to have this masterpiece as a part of our annual holiday repertoire! Great that people started seeing
The article below was originally published as a Salon97 guest post for BookRiot. Though we tend to save our reading lists for summer, the longer nights of autumn provide a perfect opportunity to catch up on some of the books we didn’t get through in the warmer months. Give those light, summer reads a more autumnal feel with this playlist of music to read by. Time to get your “adagio” on! The Seasons, Op. 67
For our March event in San Francisco, we held a group viewing of “32 Short Films About Glenn Gould.” The movie is an odd collection of vignettes and is very fitting for such an iconoclastic person. Prior to researching this film and Glenn Gould himself, I’d spent shockingly little time thinking about/listening to Bach’s Goldberg Variations, a collection that is commonly associated with Glenn Gould’s name and virtuosity. We discussed Gould’s life, the Goldbergs, and
I’ve heard a number of recordings of Serenade for Strings by Tchaikovsky and Dvorak. Many of them are very good. None, however, quite compares to this one. Recorded in 1984, this recording by the English String Orchestra isn’t new by any means. I usually like to highlight the latest and greatest, but sometimes you gotta give props to an old standby. The English String Orchestra plays these iconic works with complete ease, precision and emotion.
We’ve decided to launch a monthly recommended recording segment in 2011. Each month we’ll feature a rockin’ classical recording selected especially for our Salon97 peeps. So without further ado, our first monthly pick! Oh, so you’ve never heard of Quincy Porter. He was a super awesome American composer and was featured as a Salon97 Composer of the Week over the summer. Check it out! So now that we’re all caught up, let’s get to the
I found an amazing video on Mashable yesterday. American composer Eric Whitacre spliced 250 videos together to create a virtual choir. Below is the YouTube video performance of his work, Lux Aurumque. Breathtaking.