Twilight of the art director?


Dear Pliable, Lovely album cover. Above is another from Westminster that really takes the biscuit! An all-time favourite of mine. Never heard the recording.
Michael Richards, Sydney

Thanks Michael, knowing the wonderful piece you contributed about Stravinsky's Tibetan connection I thought it was an LP of music by George Crumb. Read here how Crumb was an influences on another vastly underrated contemporary composer.
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How listening hard alters the music

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No flowers please for Herbert von Karajan

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Messiaen and Xenakis - Oiseaux Exotiques

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So it's not just listening ...

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What was on Hitler's iPod?

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'He was genuinely convinced that he had an infallible musical ear. Heinz Lorenz suggested, 'My Führer, you ought to give a concert in the Great Hall. After all, you could afford to invite the best German musicians, Gieseking, Kempff, Furtwängler and so on. You don't go to the opera or the theatre any more, but you could listen to music. It wouldn't strain your eyes either'. Hitler rejected the idea. 'No, I don't want to trouble such artists just for me personally, but we could play a few records.' A thick book listed all the records that the Führer owned. There must have been hundreds of them. The wooden panelling of the wall turned out to be a cupboard holding records, with a built-in gramophone that was invisible till the cupboard doors were opened. The black discs stood in long rows, labelled with numbers. Bormann operated the gramophone. Hitler nearly always had the same repertory played: Léhars operettas, songs by Richard Strauss, Hugo Wolf and Ri...
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Separating the medium from the music's message

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