How much is a packet of digestives? You do the math…
When I was doing my 30-days-without-supermarkets challenge last year, I discovered that there is nothing more slippery and variable than the price of a digestive biscuit. It’s now even more…
Peachnote for all your classical ‘name-that-tune’ problems
Here was today’s musical problem – what’s the tune that Deanna Durbin singing in this film? I need the score immediately for a recording. I know it’s Strauss, but which…
Russian and Ukrainian folk song site
a-pesni is a huge and wonderful site of Russian, Ukrainian, Polish and Belarusian songs of every description – old folklore, war songs, variety, revolutionary songs, army songs, you name it.…
RIP Leo Kersley
Sorry to hear that Leo Kersley, dancer and ballet teacher, and author of my favourite ballet dictionary, died yesterday, aged 92. I would love to have met him. There are…
More on borrowings in the Nutcracker
I think most people know that there are quite a few musical borrowings in the Nutcracker, and that Tchaikovsky got the theme for the Arabian from somewhere – a Georgian…
On revolution in The Nutcracker and the limits of Google
French revolutionary musical borrowings in The Nutcracker —wny? As I said in my last post, where I think I’ve discovered a French counter-revolutionary song as a source for one of…