piano concerto Archives : Professor Carol

Friday Performance Pick – 373

July 8, 2022 by Hank Reynolds

Beethoven, Piano Concerto No. 1 Beethoven wrote his early piano concertos as a way to showcase his virtuosity as a pianist. He premiered an early version of his Piano Concerto No. 1 in 1795 but continued to rework it until 1800. Because there were many … Read more

Friday Performance Pick – 33

January 8, 2022June 19, 2015 by Hank Reynolds

Shostakovich: Piano Concerto No. 2 I grew up playing band arrangements of Shostakovich’s symphonic music. They were some of the more challenging works we took on as students, and Shostakovich wrote interesting horn parts. So I developed an early interest in his music. I still … Read more

And Then There's This . . .

Vince Bielski, When Classical Learning Meets Public Education the Dialogue Isn’t Always Socratic. “Classical education, whose name gained traction in the 1980s to evoke the movement’s focus on liberal arts and the Western canon, is struggling to overcome local political opposition.”

Peter Wood, After College: The Coming Cultural Collapse of Higher Education. “Students graduate with a veneer of knowledge rather than a core. An increasingly obsolescent institution has wedded itself to an increasingly noisome cultural stance.”

Anthony Esolen, Heap Songs Upon Their Heads. “We are the most beauty-starved people, I am persuaded, who have ever trod the earth.”

Gregory Wolfe, The Wound of Beauty. “The time has come to bring beauty back, to give it the glass slipper and invite it to the prom.”