[This preview begins the second part of a three-part Bruckner series, begun December 6-8 with "Bruckner's Fourth Symphony -- four stories for four movements," a reprise of a January 2010 post I've always been fond of. This Bruckner Seventh preview post appeared originally in July 2012.
Maybe it was a little unfair of me to include William Warfield's performance of "Ol' Man River" from the 1966 Music Theater of Lincoln Center revival of Show Boat in Friday's selections (though he was only 46, the voice showed heavy signs of wear), but I couldn't resist.
by KenI was looking at this box, Broadway in a Box, that I got for some agreeably modest price as an Amazon special -- 25 cast recordings of Broadway musicals, mostly Original Broadway Cast recordings, but with seven revivals mixed in, four from Broadway and three from the Music Theater of Linco
With the "Nutcracker Suite" sequence of Disney's Fantasia now unavailable, I thought to kick off we'd just look at this little teaser from Helgi Tómasson's San Francisco Ballet staging.by Ken[To repeat, this is an "encore presentation" of last year's encore presentation of 2011's complete-Nutcracker post, which I thought came out pretty darned well.
You'd want to think twice before bidding on this record. The ABC Command label tells you it's one of the inferior later pressings; you want an original gold-label issue. (Note: Unfortunately, last year's preview-opening video clip of the Nutcracker Suite segment of Walt Disney's Fantasia has disappeared -- not entirely surprisingly, I guess.
Marcelo Álvarez and Sondra Radvanovsky sing the Act II duet from Verdi's A Masked Ball at the Met, Dec. 8, 2012.by KenIn Friday's preview we heard answering soprano and tenor snippets from three great Verdi duets, and I hope you heard what causes them, as I noted, to blend in my head.
[This post appeared in somewhat different form on Jan.
by Ken Last night we heard a historic performance of a movement from a great symphony.
