YouTube becomes a treasure trove of classical music

A 19-year-old going by the familiar pseudonym FranzFerencLiszt has uploaded hundreds of hours of high-quality classical music performances to YouTube. Below, as a sampler, is Arthur Rubinstein playing the complete Waldstein Sonata:







Helpful tip: you apparently get better sound quality if you add &fmt=18 to the video URL.

Rizpah: Compelling Storytelling

The old lady has quite a tale to tell:

Because nothing says Christmas like Leonard Cohen

Britain is having what the Times has described as a “post-Diana's-death hysteria moment” regarding a bitter battle being fought between two versions of Leonard Cohen’s “Hallelujah” for the much coveted Christmas number one spot. There has even been a demonstration planned for Trafalgar Square over it. The Prime Minister and some-time world savior Gordon Brown has gotten personally involved.

It’s time someone cleared this up. I’ve listened to God-kows-how-many versions of “Hallelujah”, and here are the best three:

3) The Scandinavian singalong version (embedding disabled):

2) Alexandra Burke’s version:

1) Cohen’s live version:

Believe it or not, Britain has been there before. In 1953, "Answer Me" occupied the top two positions in the Christmas chart. The song had previously been the center of a controversy over the mixture of the sacred and the secular in the lyrics: the words were changed from "Answer me, oh my Lord" to "Answer me, oh my love" in order to appease offended Christians.

Two videos you should watch on Full Screen view

Swimming with the Galapagos Penguins:

Kaleidoscope:

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