Featured – Music

Winter Journey (D.911): My selection of soundtrack for The Secret History (Chapter 1- 4) by Donna Tartt

I am in the chapter 5 of Donna Tartt’s The Secret History. The privileged, well-educated and moral-degraded college kids are getting more horrible page by page. I have only read 1/3 of the book, it is still too early to say anything definitive about the book. One thing for sure, Donna Tartt is an extraordinary …

Fictionalized Biography Books by Peter Härtling

The Four Fictionalized Biography Books by Peter Hrtling: 📚 Schumanns SchattenRobert Schumann (1810 1856) 📚 Liebste Fenchel! Das Leben der Fanny Hensel-Mendelssohn in Etden und Intermezzi.Fanny Hensel (1805 1847) 📚 SchubertFranz Schubert (1797 1828) 📚 HlderlinFriedrich Hlderlin (1770 1843) I love music and literature, I think, the essence of literature and …

Concert Review: (Not) Political Music

“He (Salman Rushdie) sent us a text about love and art.” Case ScaglioneChief Conductor of the Württembergisches Kammerorchester Heilbronn David Philip Hefti’s Rhapsody for baritone and orchestra with a text by Sir Salman Rushdie is a music composition (25 minutes) commissioned by Wüttermbergische Kammerorchestra (WKO) Heilbronn. On 21.9.2022 was the world premiere in Harmonie Heilbronn …

The leaf has several names

In this essay “Shuo Mu Ye” , 林庚 Lin Geng(1910 – 2006)examines the names of the leaf in Chinese classical poetry. “Mu” 木 and “Ye”叶 both mean leaf, but in the poetic realm, the subtle differences between the two are individually and exclusively termed. The earliest works for which the distinction between the two can …

“Must the love that comes in dream necessarily be unreal?”

“Must the love that comes in dream necessarily be unreal?” Tang Xianzu (1550 – 1616) asked. He written an opera “Peony Pavilion” to answer this question. The storyline of this opera reminds me of Mozart’s opera “The Magic Flute”. Fell in love with each other before they really meet. A lover occur in a dream …

My very amateur thoughts on “Sounds and Sweet Airs”

Anna Beer inspecting the lives of eight exceptional women composers in Western classical music. It starts with Francesca Caccini (1587 – 1641) and ends with Elizabeth Maconchy (1907-1994). Beer’s narrative style is clear and vivid, it was nearly impossible to put down the book once I started to read it. Gender inequality reflected at best …