Something for Thursday

Conductor Lorin Maazel died this week, at the age of 84. He lived a fine and long musical life, and I, for one, will miss his work. Maazel conducted the very first New Year's From Vienna concert that I ever watched, and he frequently returned to that same event over the years, and he regularly turned up on various televised classical music events. Maazel always seemed gregarious and enthusiastic about his musicmaking, and that's a quality that is never in great enough supply, I think. Maazel never failed to convey that he really wanted you to like what he was doing.

Anyway, here is Lorin Maazel conducting The Ring Without Words, a concert version of orchestral extracts from Wagner's great Der Ring des Nibelungen tetralogy. Thank you for so many years of great music, Maestro Maazel!


(Maazel grew up in Pittsburgh, by the way. The best things in life seem to come from either Pittsburgh or Buffalo....)