Part of This Complete Breakfast

I dunno whether it supplies your RDA of classical-music nutrition, but the Cereal List certainly has the snap, crackle, and pop you want from a blog. Plus it has an entire “Hotties” category (dangerously underpopulated for now, but then it’s new). It’s on my list o’ blogs to read now.

Also, the much-esteemed Ionarts was kind enough to link to me last Sunday. Thanks! You have to read Ionarts. I comment there frequently, under the name “Lindemann,” which is my comment name for everywhere else too (except The Classical Beat, where I am “Lindemann777” for reasons too boring to go into).

Cheap CDs (If You’re Still Buying Those)

This has been a long time without a new post since Anne was kind enough to link to me – and much thanks to everyone who showed up and took a look around – but I have been waylaid applying for a job and preparing for my long-desired vacation (August 5th through 17th, baybee). So in place of an actual constructive thought about something, I will note that Daedalus Books and Music is having a sale on Arte Nova CDs where you buy four (at prices of about $4 per CD) and get the fifth one free. Given that you can bypass shipping charges by hauling your automobile up to their HQ in Columbia, Murrland, this is a pretty big sale.

You may think, “But cheap CDs are normally those Essential Chopin-type compilations, which lose.” You’re right, but Arte Nova is not that. Here’s what I picked up a week ago:

1. Prokofiev: Piano Sonatas, Vol. 1 – Powerball!
2. Christopher Hogwood: Klassizistische Moderne, Vol. 1 (underappreciated treasures of neoclassicism. This one has an amazing Martinu concerto grosso)
3. Janacek’s Idyll, Mladi, and Suite (who doesn’t love Mladi? Seriously? I can never hear that one enough. “Songs of My Youth” for wind quintet by a 70-year-old? Sign me up. The rest of the performances are lovely too)
4. Baroque Organ Music from France (still getting used to this, but some interesting stuff)
5. William Boyce, Symphonies (had to go a little pop there)

So I paid $16.80 for that, and those five were by no means the only interesting CDs on offer. (I plan to go back up and get Vol. 2 of the Hogwood joints at the very least.) The sale runs through September 30, and most of the good stuff on the website is also at the store. Personally, I only stopped shopping at the store because the basket of loot I was carrying became so heavy that it hurt my wrist. A highly recommended way to cheaply explore interesting repertoire. (Note: I also own this CD of Schubert piano and violin music, and it is a boring recording.)

I probably won’t get back on the blog before I leave, so have a great couple weeks, and I’ll see you at just about the time the rest of Washington is returning from its vacation.