Beautiful Music

Dwight Parry has been principal oboist of the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra (CSO) since 2007. In early May 2022 he and the CSO gave the world premiere performance of a new oboe concerto by French composer Guillaume Connesson called LES BELLES HEURES. Audiences and critics loved their luminous performance, and raved about the tuneful and virtuosic […]

Beautiful Music today is provided courtesy of two talented young women playing the music (and giving some background about) a talented young woman from centuries earlier. Natsuko Kojima and Sally Yapto play a Sonata by Princess Anna Amalia of Prussia.  

On May 14, 1643, four-year-old Louis XIV became King of France when his father, Louis XIII, died. The boy king grew up to be a huge music lover and dance enthusiast, and one of his most favored musicians was Jean-Baptiste Lully. Today’s Beautiful Music is a collection of Lully’s music for the Sun King played

The talented musician Byron Schenkman has been convening other talented musicians to play interesting programs, and today’s Beautiful Music is from the series BYRON SCHENKMAN AND FRIENDS. The November 14, 2021 installment is called MOZART & THE GENIUS OF LOVE, and the performers were violinist Rachell Ellen Wong, violinist Susan Gulkis Assadi, and pianist Byron

I had not heard of 17th century baroque composer Nikolay Diletsky until now. According to Wikipedia, he was, ” …a music theorist and composer born in the Kyiv Voivodeship of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth and active in Russia.” Today’s Beautiful Music is Nikolay Diletsky’s sacred word, PRAISE THE NAME OF THE LORD, sung by American Baroque

Fun fact: Johann Sebastian Bach’s Double Violin Concerto is one of my personal favorites! Today’s Beautiful Music features a performance of it on two extraordinary instruments: the “Vieuxtemps” Guarneri del Gesu made in 1741 and the “Auer” Stradivari crafted in 1690. American violinist Anne Akiko Meyers and Ukrainian-Israeli violin Vadim Gluzman are the soloists from

COME AGAIN is a song by John Dowland from his 1597 First Booke of Songes or Ayres. Today’s Beautiful Music is a lovely performance of the melancholy song by countertenor Reginald Mobley and lutenist Stephen Stubbs. The simple setting keeps the focus on the music, and the multiple camera angles give it a more intimate,

Petra Somlai is a Hungarian musician who studied  conducting and piano performance at the Béla Bartók Conservatory in Budapest and earned her modern piano degree at the Franz Liszt Academy of Music. Then she became interested in historical performance practices and period instruments, so she began studying fortepiano and harpsichord. Currently she is professor of

Today’s Beautiful Music features a top-notch performer playing an unusual, antique instrument. Dongsok Shin plays THE CARNIVAL OF VENICE by Carl Czerny. He’s using an instrument called a square piano; it was crafted in 1811 by Muzio Clementi & Co. You can read more about square pianos using the link below, as you listen to

Manuel de Zumaya was an early 18th-century Mexico City musician and an ordained Catholic Priest who served as chapelmaster at the cathedral in his hometown. Zumaya composed a wide variety of music, and today’s Beautiful Music features a performance of RESUENEN LOS CLARINES for 2 mixed choruses with instruments. It’s a type of composition called