The fourth movement of Mozart's last symphony is one of the greatest achievements of the human mind, and has repeatedly been connected by commentators and critics to God Himself. Indeed, the very name of the symphony - Jupiter - is a barely veiled suggestion that it has something to do with the God of Gods. And this name - like many of the most ( Read more... )

A few weeks ago, I caused a stir by posting a magnificent Smirnoff ad on the theme of "the sea giving up its dead", with an extraordinary soundtrack. sartorias posted it on her LJ in turn, blowing even more people away. Well, a complete version of the soundtrack by Peter Raeburn has been posted on Youtube, and it is even better. This is someone who moves ( Read more... )

One of the most legendary recordings ever made, and under the most fascinating circumstances, was Toscanini's recording of Shostakovich's Seventh Symphony. In 1942, the British Empire, the United States and the Soviet Union were fighting for their lives against the Axis, then at the height of its power. Soviet Russia had been until then not only ( Read more... )

On May 29, 1848, near two villages called Curtatone and Montanara, a few miles from the fortified city of Mantua, an astonishing struggle took place. Field-Marshal of the Empire of Austria Count Johann Joseph Radetzky took his Austrian Army Corps, nearly 35,000 strong on a manoeuvre to surround and destroy the Tuscan-Neapolitan lines facing Mantua ( Read more... )

I have never been any good at diaries, and honestly, the white page in front of you has a way of seeming to ask the question of the old(ish, by now)song: "What have you done today to make you feel proud?" In spite of what I wrote in my first entry, that open white space challenges you to put in something interesting ( Read more... )