Great Songs of the Eighties Book

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No, I'm not going to read this; I'm not a musician and can't read music. However, I apparently have a talent that some trained musicians probably don't have -- not that it matters much, but let me relate this:

This has happened twice in the last month or so as I was listening to the local classical music radio station while in the car. The station was playing Tchaikovsky's 3rd Symphony. This is not one of his popular works, so recognizing it is not common. I don't listen to it much myself but through deduction narrowed it down to being either the 2nd or 3rd symphony (he wrote 6 and part of a 7th). I knew the 3rd had a non-standard 5 movements, which this did, so that nailed that. Then, and here's the kicker, I tried to guess who was conducting the recording. I knew it was not a Russian orchestra or conductor because the reading was too sluggish, weighty and plain, without the spiky and springy flavor the Russians bring to their own music. So that was ruled out. I had heard some recordings in the past of Claudio Abbado and Riccardo Muti with American orchestras doing Tchaikovsky. I thought Muti's readings had some Russian tinge, or at least color, so I ruled him out and settled on Abbado.

I had guessed the work, and the conductor correctly. And this not the first time.

I'm bragging on myself because not one in a million people could do this.

-kr/eg '19