Classical Music Portrait of Winter

This might be just the weird feature of my character but I tend to look for the opposites. To be more clear, here’s a perfect example – seasons of the year. It’s hot summer now and I sincerely do love these sunny days. And talking about the extremes, I would always prefer heat to freezing.

the four seasons

But, but. The warmer it is, the more I think about winter! It’s a certain kind of nostalgia that’s following me. As a music enthusiast, I sometimes see things in music terms too. Thus my winter nostalgia is best of all conveyed through the classical music related to this cold time of the year. I’ve run through a few compilations of classical music ‘winter’ works and realized that it’s just what I need to feed my longing for the season – if it’s not temperature-wise, let it be music-wise – even better!

It’s amazing how certain composers managed to created that exceptionally vivid image of Lady Winter through a limited set of sounds. To me, the brightest works in this sense would be those by Russian composers – Rimsky-Korsakov’s “Snow Maiden” or Tchaikovsky’s “Winter Daydreams”, for example. Maybe that’s because of the fact they did know what real Russian winter could be like?

What’s your musical vision of the season?

How Lovely It Is to Celebrate Everything With Music

Do you remember your graduation ceremony? Was it rather official or as bright as this one? =)

I find it a great idea to make something as artistic (even if not so flawless) as the Hawaiian graduates’ final performance. Even despite the pretty big size of the class, the graduates 2015 did a pretty good job during such a short period of time. As a result, we have a funny medley of today’s most recognizable pop songs like by Wiz Khalifa’s "See You Again", Taylor Swift’s “Shake It Off”, Macklemore’s “Thrift shop” and other hits.

Moreover, the songs list did not get limited to pop hits only. The guys also did an original performance (sang and danced) of a very old folk song that was sung by the people of Maori in New Zealand. Well, this class’ graduation is going to be remembered for quite a long time I believe!