BINGO!

“[Charles] Rosen convinces me entirely of Chopin’s technical prowess as a composer. But I still somehow doubt that Chopin’s stature as a dominant figure of 19th-century music rested on his structural skills alone.”—-Susan McClary, review of Rosen, The Romantic Generation, Notes 52/4

My review of Samuel Hasselhorn’s and Ammiel Bushakevitz’s latest Schubert lieder disc from Harmonia Mundi’s Schubert 200 series. I enjoyed this one very much! classicalcandor.blogspot.com/2026/05/schu...

😂😂😂 But I wasn’t wrong.

😂😂😂 (Jan Swafford, “Johannes Brahms: A Biography” [Vintage Books/Random House, 1997], pg. 338.)

My review of the latest Rouvali Sibelius disc. classicalcandor.blogspot.com/2026/05/sibe...

My review of the latest in Chandos’s Shostakovich cycle. classicalcandor.blogspot.com/2026/04/shos...

One of my personal heresies: Beethoven never again equaled his Razumovsky Quartets. The late ones, while in some ways "deeper" and even more impressive, don't have the same expressive directness and emotional sweep.

My review of Järvi’s new Mahler 7. classicalcandor.blogspot.com/2026/04/mahl...

Paavo Järvi is not a great Mahler conductor.

Martin Romberg’s songs and piano music have been a wonderful recent discovery.

My review of the new Holst/Bax disc by Pappano and the LSO. classicalcandor.blogspot.com/2026/04/hols...

My review of Edward Gardner’s new Brahms 2 and 4 with the Bergen Philharmonic on Chandos is up. classicalcandor.blogspot.com/2026/03/brah...

I’m honored to be chosen for the Music Library Association’s 2026 Eva Judd O’Meara Award for my review of Byron Adams’s and Daniel Grimley’s “Vaughan Williams and His World” in Notes.

Your music isn’t great just because your story is sad.

My review of the new Avril Coleridge-Taylor recording: classicalcandor.blogspot.com/2026/02/avri...

Saddened to hear of Tamás Vásáry’s death. A very fine pianist who left behind some terrific Chopin recordings among other things.

My review of Chandos’s new Bennett/Duke Violin Concertos release. classicalcandor.blogspot.com/2026/02/benn...

My review of Diyang Mei’s Bowen and Walton Viola Concertos. classicalcandor.blogspot.com/2026/01/bowe...

My review of Onyx’s recent Butterworth/Holst recording featuring Andrew Manze and the RLPO. @loveinner.bsky.social classicalcandor.blogspot.com/2026/01/butt...

My review of SOMM’s new Samuel Coleridge-Taylor release. This one’s a winner. classicalcandor.blogspot.com/2026/01/samu...

Samuel Coleridge-Taylor was a very good composer.

“There is always a danger in musicology of making too much out of too little.”- Alan Walker, “Fryderyk Chopin: A Life and Times” (Picador, 2018), p. 478. I’d say over 50% of musicology I read has this problem. Amplification of mere possibility, + impatience with the limitations of primary sources.

Okay, one area where Apple outdoes Spotify: 100,000-track playlists. Wow! Ideal if you want to put a huge body of musical literature together and just marinade in it over months.

I’d like to quit X and move fully to Bluesky. But this place lacks the reach, variety, and engagement of X. I hate that microblogging is so fractured now.

My favorites of the year. Up at Classical Candor. classicalcandor.blogspot.com/2025/12/ryan...

This is exactly right. Balakirev 1 needs more love in the concert hall. It’s a fabulous romantic symphony. No wonder Karajan recorded it.

Many now object to Schenker because of his racism. I just think his kind of analysis isn’t that meaningful. It’s all a glorified Sudoku puzzle, not that important for experiencing the music in performance.

Nice to have regular access here again. As a Mississippi resident, I had to verify my age. My state and this app reached an agreement just very recently. Yay.

My review of this recording is up. classicalcandor.blogspot.com/2025/12/mend...

My review of Matthew Riley’s fine book, “English Diatonic Music, 1887-1955,” is up at Music & Letters. academic.oup.com/ml/advance-a...

My review of the recent Schiff recording featuring Lucerne performances of Scarlatti. classicalcandor.blogspot.com/2025/11/dome...

Always nice to receive one of these emails. :)

My review of the new Andsnes Liszt recording. classicalcandor.blogspot.com/2025/04/lisz...

This is a terrific cycle. Engerer really feels these pieces. She does nothing weird/off-putting; she’s just a performer accentuating what makes the music great.

Don’t sleep on this music. I’m still enamored with it even after many months. The sixth etude especially, La Forêt Oubliée,” is a contemporary treasure.

Liszt’s Fifth Hungarian Rhapsody is a masterpiece. One of his very best compositions. It should be treated like the gem of Romantic musical expression it is. So underrated.

Wonderful recording. Some of Bach’s best cantatas.

We need more recordings of Liszt’s Hungarian Rhapsodies. Such colorful, fun pieces. Lots of room for new interpretations.

I don't think the most important thing about a piece of music is its structure. I think the most important thing about it is its spiritual or emotional effect upon the listener. Structure can have something to do with this, but very often it doesn't.

Schubert’s development sections often turn out to be more like “fantasy remixes” of his themes. I absolutely LOVE that about his music.

I'm glad to be back at Classical Candor reviewing music. Here is my (positive) take on the new Ruth Gipps orchestral works disc from Chandos: classicalcandor.blogspot.com/2025/02/ruth...

Just listened to the new Rouvali Sibelius 6 and 7 on Alpha. 6 is better than 7 here, but neither is particularly good. He doesn’t always have a good sense of what to assign to the foreground, the middle-ground, and the background in 6. And 7 is just a spasmodic mess.

“It is impossible really to appreciate a truly great symphony without understanding its structure, because in such a work, expression is largely the result of structure.”—Marc Vignal POPPYCOCK!

All FREE today at the local library! 😲😲😲

This place is nice and all, but it lacks the engagement that I used to enjoy on the other app. It’s a pity that new ownership and bitter political feuds eventually created a situation where people were compelled to seek forums along partisan lines. Now no app scratches all the itches.

Dirty little secret: Beethoven’s Pastoral Symphony had a more consequential influence upon the course of the symphony genre than his Fifth did.

I guess the music folks I enjoy following have largely migrated to here. Very well.