What Are You Listening To Right Now? Febus MK 10

 

I like how you have Mahler's picture as your signature. Mahler is my Dad's favorite composer and I believe he owns just about every recording you could imagine. I know he owns every box set of Mahler's symphonies. The last set he bought was Tilson Thomas' set with the San Francisco Symphony Orchestra. Do you have any favorite Mahler conductors? Bernstein, Tennstedt, Abbado, Rattle, Haitink, Chailly, Bertini, etc?

 

What are your favorite works by Mahler? I'm personally not a huge Mahler fan. I prefer Russian, East European, Latin American, and French composers over the Austrians and Germans. Obviously my favorite composer is Shostakovich. I think the wonderful thing about his music, especially reading his history, is his music isn't always what it sounds like. There seems like there's an ulterior motive behind much of his music. I don't know any composer in history who had to endure what Shostakovich did. He had to deal with Stalin's iron fist for 30 years and since Shostakovich was an internationally known and acknowledged composer, Stalin made it even harder on him to composer music in absolute freedom, so there has been fierce debate as to whether there are secret messages hidden in his music. Anyway, Shostakovich's music speaks to me like no other. Other favorite composers: Ravel, Bartok, Vaughan Williams, Villa-Lobos, Stravinsky, Prokofiev, Koechlin, Debussy, Janacek, Szymanowski, among others. What about you?

She washes over me

She saved my life, in a manner of speaking

When she gave me back the power to believe.

KC - The Power to Believe

An excellent album.