Comprador y lector compulsivo

Great.

Revisado: 06-27-19

Great, as all the great music courses by Professor Greenberg.
He delivers and transmits his wisdom and passion.

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Marvellous, as always.

Revisado: 05-22-18

Professor Greenberg offers a detailed and deep account of Beethoven's life and the difficult circumstances of his life that shaped his character and his work.

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As (almost) superb as Prof. Greenberg usually does

Revisado: 07-31-17

Have you listened to any of Professor Robert Greenberg’s other performances before? How does this one compare?

Most of them, with great pleasure.

Was there a moment in the book that particularly moved you?

When he does an analysis of the musical theory behind the music.

Any additional comments?

It's amazing and wonderful, almost as usually. It's a pity that the fact that the potential listeners are from the USA makes him include too many irrelevant US composers in this survey. He usually keeps an exquisite balance of who really is/was who in the musical world history. Of course, there are some who are really worthy and should be here, but many others... By doing this, other composers of higher worth from other countries have been neglected sadly. Moreover, it's surprising how the Spanish (and American) composers are misrepresented, except the American composers born in the USA, of course. No mention of Héitor Villa-Lobos or Manuel de Falla, for example. No mention of Tomás Luis de Victoria or Antonio de Cabezón, two of the three most eminent composers all over Europe during the Renaissance. Or many others. In the survey lectures about The symphony, the Professor overrepresented as well some over-rated US composers (and also a few from the London colonies -just kidding, or not?), but in this survey he's gone way farther. The lecture about Elliot Carter I guess should have never been included, should he have made this lecture in 2017, and not in 2005. And he should have included some other names he mentioned but discarded. But in general, provided that this is a survey made by a USA company and a US Professor, it is not too jingoistic, at least not until when the lectures enter the 20th century... :-) Another detail : I would love and would buy immediately a course about "Musical theory (and applied to masterworks), and some notions about the compositional compared methods by the great masters, for the layman", by Professor Greenberg.

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Wonderful, as always.

Revisado: 07-22-17

Professor Greenberg teaches us wonderfully about the best symphonies and symphonists of the history of music.

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Too many politics and less music than expected.

Revisado: 07-18-17

I agree that it is necessary to explain the political background in which Shostakovich lived, but nevertheless I would have preferred less politics and much more music.

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Great introduction to some of the greatest operas and composers.

Revisado: 07-16-17

Great as usual, Professor Greenberg.
But I would rather consider this lecture an enlarged version of the Opera sections of the main wonderful lecture "How to listen to and understand great music, 3rd edition". It explains more in focus mostly one opera only by just one composer of every main music history period or language/nationalistic school.. And, sadly most of those works/composers are the same than we already treated in the larger lecture "How to listen to and understand great music, 3rd edition", although here they are explained in most cases in more detail.
I would have loved to have had a wider perspective of authors and works by author.
Also, the recording quality is not the same one, since it seems to have been recorded live.
I am used to such high quality level by Professor Greenberg, that in this case I can only rate this lecture as 4-4.5.

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Exceptional.

Revisado: 06-25-17

It's an amazing course, thorough and complete. The energy and comparisons of the professor are astonishing.
I would like though that he did not repeat so much the same pieces once and again, and that he covered other countries/authors. It's completely focused on Italy and Germany and sometimes France (and Russia at the end). Of course those should be the basis of the course, but more variety wouldn't hurt; besides he misses some key figures only because they are not German/Italian/French.
I have also bought most of the courses by Professor Greenberg, since I am sure I will love them and learn a lot.

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Wonderful story and incredible performance.

Revisado: 06-23-17

Would you listen to Metro 2033 again? Why?

Yes. Indeed I first knew about the book about ten years ago, when I was living in Moscow. And it's not the first time I read it.

What did you like best about this story?

It's wonderful. And you must know the Moscow Metro (which I simply love) to understand how smart is Glukhovsky's story.
You must know how the circular line crosses all other lines and it's the most convenient shortcut to unite different lines and make travels underground much more efficient; only this way you can understand how it became the powerful Hansa and it makes so difficult Artiom's voyage if he cannot go through its stations. This is just an example. Another one is the red line. In Moscow everyone knows and names the lines by their colours, seldom by their names, so it is obvious why it was seized by the communist nostalgics. But to me the most intelligent move was about the Polis. It is really true that it is a neuralgic centre of communications and a bee hive underground. I only miss that some of the most amazing and fantastic stations are not described in much detail, because the Moscow Metro is an underground museum. The Komsomolskaya station is mentioned as a palace-like, and it's completely true, with its huge lamps, hanging at 30-40 metres high from the ceiling. But the beautiful Arbatskaya is not described, or another of my favourite ones, Ploshchad Revoliutsii (Revolution Square)...
I read it (and listened to it) in English and there were some passages that were hard to understand to me, and !i first blamed myself because !i am not English speaker as native. But after reading other comments, I realized that the translation is not very good and did not render a good service to the original in Russian. And Russian language is very nuanced and poetic, so you can spoil it very quickly if you don't pay attention to the translation.
But the story attracted me from day one when I first started to read it, and its originality. I am sure that the only reason why it hasn't become a Hollywood film yet is because if the plot is moved to the USlA and Artiom is re-baptised as John American (this is what they always do at Hollywood), then the story loses most of its charm. Anyway, if they did it perverting the original location, I wouldn't see that movie, for sure.

Which scene was your favorite?

In general the whole story.

Did you have an extreme reaction to this book? Did it make you laugh or cry?

I simply enjoyed it a lot. And I envisioned the stations in my mind, as I recall them.

Any additional comments?

It's surprising that the book didn't include any map of the Moscow Metro. In the Russian original it is understandable because everybody knows the Moscow Metro, or can at least find it online. But in the English edition this is not so clear. And an explanation of the metro, its lines, and how it works, would have been appreciated, not for me, because I know quite well the Moscow Metro, but for other readers.

Finally, but maybe the most important (last but not least), the performance by the reader. Although it is somewhat flat while narrating the story, his acting and voices characterizations are simply amazing. And his Russian accent, almost perfect. You must be Russian or must have lived several years there (like me) to notice his mistakes, especially with the names, because he doesn't stress the correct syllables when pronouncing some names and most of the stations. But even with that, it left me for a longtime wondering if he was maybe a 2nd or 3rd generation US citizen with Russian ancestors. So incredible is his emulation of the Russian accent.

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Original and delicious story.

Revisado: 06-11-17

A fresh, original and delicious story that surprised me completely. I enjoyed it from the very moment it made such turn in the events in the second chapter.
And the narrator, Ray Porter, simply perfect, with his ability to shift voices and modulate his voice transmitting feelings and not being excessive nor an automated machine. Simply wonderful. I can't believe that he's the same narrator of Expeditionary Forces: Columbus Day, that was disgusting for me, although probably it was due to the fact that I hated the story itself and he was told to speak with such ugly accent full of slang and militaristic nazi-onalistic Trump-style expressions. Nothing to do with this wonderful book and the perfect performance by the narrator in this case. Maybe, on the contrary, this proves the chameleonic versatility of the narrator.

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Wonderfully entertaining.

Revisado: 06-11-17

A story that continues to be as absorbing as it was in the first volume. And with the ever-growing number of characters you never lose the thread of what's going on and by who. The stories are so rich and varied that if there is some negative comment to be made is that some stories are dealt in too excessive detail (the Deltans) and others are (almost) neglected in this book (for example, the populations of enclaves other than the USE). By the way, the USE paradoxically seems to be composed and administered only by British people, contrary to the reality of our real world.
The narrator, Ray Porter, always spectacular, trying to vary voices not to Bree to repetitive with so many characters. Only from time to time you will some loose paragraphs patched and inserted from a different recording session, and you can hear it very clearly. In the first book this never happened (you could not tell when that happened), and some minor and completely irrelevant changes to the written text, probably for the best, but it surprised me. Probably all this was due to the hurry with which both text and recording were processed to be made available to the public. I hope that the third book, which I will be waiting impatiently, will not suffer from the same defects.
All the same, it absorbed me so that I finished it in a couple of days, like the first one.

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