Richard Whiteman Old Prose (2020) HD

A series of anecdotes shouldn't by rights add up to an autobiography, but that's just one of the many pieces of received wisdom that Nobel Prize-winning physicist Richard Feynman (1918-88) cheerfully ignores in his engagingly eccentric book, a bestseller ever since its initial publication in 1985. Fiercely independent (read the chapter entitled "Judging Books by Their Covers"), intolerant of stupidity even when it comes packaged as high intellectualism (check out "Is Electricity Fire?"), unafraid to offend (see "You Just Ask Them?"), Feynman informs by entertaining.

An esteemed conductor who has worked with most of the major orchestras and made more than 300 recordings, José Serebrier is also a prolific composer. He became established at an early age with Leopold Stokowski giving the world première of his Symphony No. 1, when he was only 17 years old. He studied composition with Martinu and Copland, while also learning conducting from Doráti, Monteux and Stokowski, who named the 22-year old Serebrier his associate conductor. This dual career has flourished ever since, as demonstrated by this disc on which Serebrier conducts the RTÉ National Symphony Orchestra in some of his most recent works.