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Music Magazine: Gapplegate Classical-Modern Music Review

  Tobias Fischer

Website:
http://classicalmodernmusic.blogspot.de/

Founded in:
2007

Run by:
Gregory Applegate Edwards

Concept:
Gregory Applegate Edwards's Classical-Modern Music Review blogsite covers recent releases or re-issues of recordings that feature classical and concert music, primarily of the 20th and 21st Centuries, but earlier music as well when warranted. All styles of relevance will be addressed from Late-Romantic and Neo-Romantic through High-Modern, Avant Garde and Post-Modern styles. Chamber music, orchestral, choral, operatic, and electronic forms will be considered as well as music that combines a classical element with one or more other stylistic elements. Earlier periods will get coverage when a release has something to say to us. Both established and unfamiliar composers will get attention.

Why we like it:
There is a fundamental dilemma in most classical and new music coverage: Either, writers are knowledgeable, but incapable of translating their expertise into something actually readable. Or they're talented writers, but incapable of providing professional, informed judgements. Gregory Applegate Edwards, however, is both. His reviews are both fluid and functional, making for an entertaining and stimulating read, while simultaneously providing a historical introduction, a summary of what to expect as well as the key reasons why a particular recording might be of interest to the listener. In doing so, they invite readers into a world that might otherwise remain closed to them by boiling down some of the most exciting and complex music of our times to a single question: What should I listen to next?

Over the years, Applegate has written thousands of reviews across three different blogs – a staggering productivity, which has resulted in a living archive of exciting 20th century composition and a great source for staying up to date on what's happening on the scene.