Terez Rose

Ten Spooky Classical Music Favorites for Halloween

It’s Halloween, and you’re looking for that perfect, spooky Halloween music that’s a little more sophisticated than “The Monster Mash” and “Thriller” and “Werewolves of London.” Look no further, friends. I’ve done my own hopping around...

Ravel’s Curious Piano Concerto for the Left Hand

Maurice Ravel I suppose it’s not all that curious. If you are a concert pianist and your right arm is a casualty in World War I, afterwards you have two options. One: give up your music career...

Aram Khachaturian’s Sizzling Piano Concerto

With its driving rhythms, distinct flavors, accessibility, and charm, Aram Khachaturian's piano concerto was an instant success in 1936. Have no doubt, it’s a sizzler. It’s decisive, flamboyant, and arrives and departs in a pyrotechnic dazzle... Aram Khachaturian

Rimsky-Korsakov’s Magical “Scheherazade”

Warning: do not attempt to drive or operate heavy machinery while listening to Rimsky-Korsakov’s Scheherazade for the first time. Said composition is known to have caused feelings of extreme uplift, a dreamlike state, mild disorientation and a disassociation with...

10 Great Violin Concertos You Must Hear

The fun thing about really getting to know the violin concerto repertoire is that there are always more treasures to discover... The violin concerto repertoire is so rich and satisfying, I’m embarrassed to admit that, prior to becoming...

Requiem for His Daughter: Franz Schmidt’s Lament

Franz Schmidt's lament makes grief beautiful. It elevates it to something irreproachable, like snow on a mountain peak that, when you’re stumbling around in it, stings and chills and makes you lose your footing, but from the distance, oh, the inexpressible beauty...

Chopin for Everyone

There’s something about Frédéric François Chopin that puts him and his music in a category of its own. Born in Poland, a child prodigy on the piano, Chopin trained in Warsaw, and left Poland at age twenty. By twenty-one, he was settled in Paris and quickly became Someone Worth...

Gustav Mahler and the Curse of the Ninth Symphony

Back in the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries, a superstition developed in the classical music world that prophesied the Ninth would be a composer’s last symphony. Arnold Schoenberg summed it up in an eloquent fashion, stating that “he who wants...

Max Bruch: The Romantic Composer You’ve Never Heard (Enough) Of

The problem with poor Max Bruch was that he was born too late. What he produced is art that seems to give off an invisible radiance, one you can feel on your flushed cheeks, deep within your heart as you listen. This is art that got overlooked...

Elgar, Enigma, and Easter

Easter likely hadn’t been on Edward Elgar’s mind when he wrote his Enigma Variations, yet this wondrous, utterly memorable piece conjures up a rush of powerful spirituality, a sense of Easter Sunday grandeur. It is most decidedly “death has been conquered; arise and go forth” music...

The Exoticism & Euphoria of Debussy’s “Afternoon of a Faun”

Claude Debussy's "Afternoon of a Faun" delivers volumes of sensation. Languor, sensuality, euphoria, curiosity, an awareness of the exotic. You are flung back to your own childhood, your adolescence, all awash in new experiences, colors, sensations. For ten fleeting minutes, you let the music cradle you, transport...

Haunted by Camille Saint-Saëns’ “Organ Symphony”

Camille Saint-Saëns' Symphony No. 3 has so many distinct and wonderful flavors, it just amazes me. And the first movement is so vibrant, unexpected, cinematic. The second movement utterly transports me... Being haunted by music sounds like...

Is Rachmaninoff’s Music Too Schmaltzy?

Many classical music purists today consider Sergei Rachmaninoff’s music to be excessively sentimental, admittedly lush but too similar-sounding once you’ve heard one concerto. But is this a fair assessment?... Sergei Rachmaninoff’s Piano Concerto No. 2, Op 18...

10 Tips for the Fledgling Classical Music Lover

Are you dipping your toe into the classical music waters, not sure if you’re up for the full swim, but willing to wade around a bit? Hop in—the temperature is just right! Here are 10 tips for you...