Classical
This section covers recording histories, birthdays, and anniversaries from composers and performers in classical music, along with vinyl reissue news as it appears. Classical music has long relied on multi-disc box sets to hold complete symphonies, operas, and cycles that don't fit on a single LP, and labels such as Deutsche Grammophon and Decca built strong reputations for recording quality that audiophile reissue programs still draw on today. Expect stories here about specific performances and recording sessions, the conductors, orchestras, and soloists behind them, along with notes on why a particular pressing or box set continues to matter to collectors.
78 STORIES
Why Did George Harrison Open His 1974 Tour With an Instrumental?
George Harrison opened his 1974 North American tour with the instrumental "Hari's on Tour (Express)" as laryngitis left his voice badly damaged.
· 4 min read
Why Did The Who's Quadrophenia Nearly Sink Them?
The Who's Quadrophenia arrived on Track Records on October 26, 1973, a double album built from Pete Townshend's writing that nearly tore the group apart.
· 4 min read
David Oistrakh Played Until the Final Hours
Soviet violinist David Oistrakh died of a heart attack on October 24, 1974, hours after walking off a stage in Amsterdam. He had already survived one heart attack in 1964.
· 4 min read
How Franz Liszt Walked Away From the Piano at 35
Franz Liszt gave his last paid concert in September 1847, at age 35. He walked away from the stage at the height of the frenzy Heinrich Heine had named Lisztomania.
· 4 min read
How Karl Richter Sent Bach Into Deep Space
Karl Richter, the German conductor born in Plauen in 1926, led the Munich Bach Orchestra recording of Brandenburg Concerto No. 2 that NASA placed on the Voyager golden record in 1977.
· 5 min read
Why Did Yngwie Malmsteen Record Only Covers on Inspiration?
Released on 14 October 1996 through Music for Nations, Inspiration was Yngwie Malmsteen's ninth studio album and his first recorded at his own Studio 308.
· 3 min read
Why Did Freudiana End The Alan Parsons Project?
Freudiana came out on 11 October 1990 as the eleventh Alan Parsons Project album. Creative disagreements between Eric Woolfson and Alan Parsons turned it into their final joint work.
· 4 min read
Chucho Valdés and the Sound His Father Left Behind
Chucho Valdés began his first recording sessions in Havana in January 1964, four years after his father Bebo left Cuba and fell silent for three decades.
· 4 min read
How Camille Saint-Saëns Built a Life from a Paris Debut
Camille Saint-Saëns was born in Paris on 9 October 1835. At ten he played Mozart and Beethoven concertos from memory, a debut that led to the Conservatoire and a church organ post.
· 4 min read
Einojuhani Rautavaara Started Piano at Seventeen
Einojuhani Rautavaara, born in 1928, did not begin formal piano lessons until he was 17, after losing both parents as a child. The delay, not a prodigy's start, shaped his composing career.
· 4 min read
Why Yo-Yo Ma Chose the Cello at Four Years Old
Yo-Yo Ma first picked up a cello in Paris in 1960, at four years old, after trying drums, violin, piano and viola. That choice shaped a life that led to the Silk Road Ensemble.
· 3 min read
Why Did Mario Lanza Bet His Voice on Hollywood?
Mario Lanza died in Rome on 7 October 1959, twelve years after Louis B. Mayer handed him a seven-year MGM contract that pulled him off the opera stage and into Hollywood.
· 4 min read
Diana Lynn: The Prodigy Who Gave a Play Its Home
Diana Lynn, born Dolores Mary Loehr, was a piano prodigy who became a Paramount actress. She later lent her house to Mart Crowley while he wrote The Boys in the Band.
· 4 min read
Yundi: The Boy Who Broke the Chopin Silence
Yundi Li was born in Chongqing in 1982 to steel-plant workers. He became the first Chinese pianist to win the International Chopin Piano Competition in Warsaw in 2000.
· 4 min read
How R.E.M. Made Automatic for the People
R.E.M.'s eighth album grew out of demos cut in the winter of 1990, when Peter Buck steered the Athens band toward a quieter, organ-heavy sound.
· 3 min read
Glenn Branca and the 100-Guitar Symphony
Glenn Branca led a hundred electric guitars at the World Trade Center on June 13, 2001, in a career built on redefining what the instrument could do.
· 3 min read
Jean-François Le Sueur risked everything on an orchestra
Jean-François Le Sueur put an orchestra inside Notre-Dame in 1786, lost his post when the music budget was cut, and later found rescue from Napoleon.
· 3 min read
Why Did Granville Bantock Abandon the Empire for Music?
Granville Bantock was meant to serve the empire in India, but instead became a composer, conductor and the force behind Birmingham's orchestra.
· 4 min read
Paul Badura-Skoda and the Piano That Could Not Be One
In a Vienna studio, the Austrian pianist Paul Badura-Skoda sat down to record the same Schubert sonata three separate times, each take on a piano from a differe…
· 4 min read
Karol Szymanowski and the Young Poland Circle
Karol Szymanowski joined the Young Poland in Music circle in 1905, a short-lived Warsaw group backed by Prince Władysław Lubomirski. The circle gave Polish music a decisive push.
· 4 min read
Montserrat Caballé and the Night That Made Her
Montserrat Caballé stepped in at Carnegie Hall in 1965 and earned a twenty-minute ovation. The unknown Spanish soprano became one of the defining voices of her century.
· 4 min read
John Cage: The Inventor Who Turned Silence Into Music
In 1928, John Cage proposed a day of silence at the Hollywood Bowl, an idea that grew into '4′33″' and a lifetime of turning listening itself into music.
· 4 min read
How Jacques Offenbach Left His Final Opera Unfinished
Jacques Offenbach, born in the Prussian Rhineland in 1819, died in Paris in 1880 leaving his serious opera The Tales of Hoffmann unfinished.
· 4 min read
Glenn Gould Gave Up the Stage and Changed Classical Music
Glenn Gould played his final public concert in Los Angeles at 31. He then walked away from the stage for good and spent 18 years building a reputation on recordings alone.
· 3 min read