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Three more winners
Revisiting our "Catch of the Day" for February 7
February 8, 2021
Three albums only this time, but each a winner in its distinctive way. Here they are, in order of appearance, with track listings: William Susman, A Quiet Madness (Belarca 2020) - Seven Scenes for Four Flutes
Patricia Zuber, flutes (all four of them) Stas Venglevski, bayan
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Island in the stream
Rapa Nui native Mahani Teave learned to play the piano on her island's only instrument
February 6, 2021 • Air Mail
Twist's double feature
Phantasmagoric Berlioz, fantaisiste Mondonville from a peerless puppeteer
February 3, 2021 • Air Mail
When Basil Twist got his MacArthur in 2015, the only question was why it had taken so long. As far as the smart money was concerned, his genius had been established fact since 1998, when he first interpreted an opium dream from the pen of Hector Berlioz in a 500-gallon aquarium. Some critics called Twist's Symphonie Fantastique a nonrepresentational underwater puppet show; more accurately, Twist himself described it as a "spectacle of abstract form." Whipped up from tatters of fabric, wands, the odd ostrich feather, acrylic cutouts, and other far-from-precious bric-a-brac, the instant hit went on to glory in boutique venues around the world.
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February 2, 2021
We cleared the deck this week for three extra guests: - Riccardo Muti, maestro of maestros;
- the pianist Mahani Teave, who visited with us via Zoom from her ancestral home in the shadow of the fabled moai of Easter Island (audio links above);
- the composer David Hertzberg, whose lavish, mind-altering scores affect his growing fan base like a narcotic.
As a chaser, there was choral music of luminous austerity from the Icelandic composer María Huld Markan Sigfúsdóttir. The Sigfúsdóttir tracks and those from "Rapa Nui Odyssey" are available on the linked Apple Music playlist. *
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A New Year, a new age?
Revisiting our first Catch of the Day of 2021
January 9, 2021
On the tenth day of Christmas—that would be January 3—we set a high bar for the year ahead (can eleven lords a-leaping be far behind?). Check out the playlist on Apple Music. Top picks Charles Ives: Complete Symphonies (Deutsche Grammophon 2020) Los Angeles Philharmonic; Gustavo Dudamel
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Books by Matthew Gurewitsch
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