John Zech, classical host and the voice of Composers Datebook, is retiring. "I have always enjoyed going to work and being a part of your lives," he writes to listeners as he explains his departure.


Classical host John Zech bids farewell to listeners

The four women of Hamburg's Salut Salon combine virtuosity, playfulness and acrobatics in their performances of great classical music. Host John Zech shares a video of a performance that's a joy for the ears and for one's sense of humor.


Are these women the Harlem Globetrotters of piano quartets?

Classical host John Zech shared this video making the rounds on the Internet: A three-year-old energetically conducts the finale to Beethoven's Symphony No. 5.


This three-year-old conducts Beethoven with brio

The news just came across the wires early this morning. Here’s the obit from the A-P: MOSCOW (AP) – Famed master cellist and conductor Mstislav Rostropovich has died. The maestro, who was 80, died in Moscow. He had lived abroad for years in self-imposed exile and became a courageous champion of the rights of Soviet-era […]


Rostropovich has died

Okay…not quite classical, perhaps. But it’s a lot of fun. The Monty Python gang, in a shameless bit of promotion for their musical Spamalot, got together 5,567 of the Python faithful in Trafalgar Square to set a world record for the largest orchestra of coconuts ever assembled. If you aren’t aquainted with the “Knights Who […]


World's Largest Orchestra…of coconuts!

The TV series Frasier was one of the smartest comedies on the air, and the writers were pretty good with classical music, too. David Hyde Pierce, the actor who played Niles, turns 48 today, and by way of a birthday tribute, here’s one of the funniest bits from the glorious history of the show…choreographed to […]


Happy Birthday, Niles!

Joaquin Rodrigo, the blind composer who wrote the very popular Concierto de Aranjuez, once said the ideal Spanish guitar for composers would be a “strange, fantastic, multiform instrument with the wings of a harp, the tail of a piano, and the soul of a guitar.” I think I found one. It’s actually weirder than what […]


Creepy Guitar

Just in cast you think the classical music world is all tuxedos and concert halls, consider the case of composer/conductor Pierre Boulez who celebrates his 82nd birthday today. Boulez has always been in the avant garde when it comes to advocating for new music, and one of his “revolutionary” remarks got him into some hot […]


Boulez birthday bomb

It was almost exactly twenty years ago when I was visiting my friend Miklos in Budapest. Miklos is a mathematician, and a great lover of music, and when I came over to his apartment he had a copy of Bach’s Two-Part Inventions sitting open on his piano. He picked it up and said, “John, isn’t […]


A slice of musical Pi

Lotsa news this weekend about expensive violins. In Paris police say they have recovered two violins, together worth more than $250,000, stolen from a musician with the Los Angeles Philharmonic in December. More details here. Meanwhile, the New Jersey Symphony is going to be selling off their so-called “Golden Age” collection of rare stringed instruments […]


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