Hui | September 25, 2009

With all these uncertainty in my mind, I left an absentee bid, which as the title said, was not high enough. From a collecting point of view, I always think it is actually nice not to get the first hunt in a new field so that the interest and passion can be tested over time while the knowledge can be further enhanced. Falling in love at the first sight is romantic, but collecting is not dating, but marriage with the goal of life long harmony and enjoyment (albeit sometimes “divorce” may happen”). In this case, the second look or third look is more important. The question is: Can I find another piece of Mahler by Emil Orlik? [Read More...]

Category: Art, Artist, Auction, Music | No Comments »
Tags: Auguste Rodin, drypoint, Emil Orlik Gustav Mahler, etching, Swann Auction Galleries

Geo | August 28, 2009

Lots are won on eBay every day, some with high prices, but few buyers respond to a winning lot by issuing a press release. Oregon Blues Collector and longtime Rare Records dealer John Tefteller won a recent eBay auction which featured a previously unknown and potentially one of a kind Blues 45 rpm record produced by the Sun label back in 1953. “I think I stole it,” said Tefteller in his release. [Read More...]

Category: Collecting, Music | 1 Comment »
Tags: 78 rpm record, D. A. Hunt, eBay, Greyhound Blues, Sun records

Hui | July 14, 2009

So how long will the market begin to see the collectible values of CDs? If the question is asked a few years ago, I would say not soon. But with the rapid growth of music content on internet, music is on the final stage of being decoupled from its media. Every movement toward some new style may also trigger the nostagia sentimentality. No matter in what age, the desire to own tangible things is part of the human nature. Thus the day when we cannot ‘t find a regular online store to buy CDs will be the days when memory of physical solidity associated with music demands a space in antiques mall allocated for these plastic discs. You may think this may come a long way, but the trasition is happening, at a lighting speed that you may not notice.

Category: Collecting, Music | No Comments »
Tags: CD

Hui | July 12, 2009

“There are some people who would kill their own mother for the only copy of a Son House record, and they sure as hell would kill your mother, and you.” From the article “They’ve Got Those Old, Hard-to-Find Blues” by Amada Petrusich on New York Times.

At the age when almost every piece of music on earth can be downloaded from online and be played on a tiny plastic equipment, there are still people who are fervent for collecting some “unwieldy, impractical and unstable” records which only holds two to three minutes music per side, for thousand dollars or even more.

Category: Collecting, Music | 2 Comments »
Tags: 78 rpm record

Hui | March 23, 2009

Now it has changed: Young generation of Chinese talk about Shostakovitch, Boulez, or John Adams, but 50 years ago, the only officially approved western music in China was of Russian School. Less rhetoric than German, less dandy than French, Russian music is one of the kind that my father’s generation felt and loved.
The Bavarian Radio [...]

Category: Music | No Comments »
Tags: Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra, Mariss Jansons, Tchaikovsky

Hui | January 24, 2009

Concertgoers, when entering the grand main lobby and see the restored shimmering golden hall, will sure agree with Alburn’s assertion that “Severance Hall is one of those singular and complete triumphs which come to an American community infrequently, if ever”. [...]

Category: Architecture, Music | No Comments »
Tags: Art Deco, Cleveland Orchestra, Nathan Milstein, Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra, Severance Hall, Syria Mosque

Hui | January 20, 2009

Although “Lincoln Portrait” was withdrawn because of the political reason, it still remains as Copland’s most performed piece. Perhaps there is no better timing than today that “Lincoln Portrait” should be performed for the inauguration of the first African American president in the United States. From the 16th to the 44th president, America has taken a long road to illustrate the essence of democracy.[...]

Category: Music | No Comments »
Tags: Air and Simple Gifts, Alison Krause, Arron Copland, Barack Obama, Itzhak Perlman, John Williams, Lincoln Portrait

Hui | October 27, 2008

I have found the art, regardless of its form, attracts me the most when the meaning of it is bordering between vaguely suggestive and elusively evolving, in space, time and above all in human minds.
When I was in the elementary school, Tchaikovsky’s endless melodies ran like spring water flowing through my toes. They are picturesque, [...]

Category: Art, Music | No Comments »
Tags: Antoine Watteau, Gustave Mahler

Hui | September 27, 2008

On the third night that Michael Tilson Thomas and his San Francisco Symphony Orchestra took the stage of Carnegie Hall, the program fell back into conventional: a compact symphony by Knussen preludes Beethoven 9.
Knussen’s symphony has extremely crafted texture and colors: strings either contributed ghostly tremolos or chopped abruptly with percussion-wise sound. It is dichotomic [...]

Category: Music, Other Topics | No Comments »
Tags: Beethoven, Brooklyn Museum, Carnegie Hall, Michael Tilson Thomas, San Francisco Symphony Orchstra

Hui | September 15, 2008

It is as hard to imagine music without late Beethoven as to understand why they were so cherished when I was younger. My tastes in fine art appreciation, in retrospective, seem to follow a similar route. Late Beethoven has forlorn the grandeur discourse and exceptional prowess, instead he expressed a sense of instability that roots [...]

Category: Music | No Comments »
Tags: Beethoven, Brooklyn Museum