From the Philadelphia Inquirer:<P><B>In hard times, old standards sound fresh</B><P>By David Patrick Stearns <BR>INQUIRER MUSIC CRITIC<P> <BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><HR>Sometime between anthrax and Halloween, two compact discs arrived in the mail that seemed so incongruous they may well have been imports from a parallel universe: Handel's Messiah and Tchaikovsky's Nutcracker.<P>You don't have to have lost a loved one in the World Trade Center to be in a state of grief. Losing one's sense of safety is quite enough. Coping with such elemental shifts, however, can accelerate inner growth in a way that eventually may allow you to live with these new voids in your life, the lack of things you once thought essential.<P>Consider, for example, the "Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy." Though it's become mall Muzak, the charming combination of celesta, bass clarinet, and pizzicato strings is almost bizarre. And this wrong-but-right combination has everything to do with the piece's otherworldliness, which we've long taken for granted.<HR></BLOCKQUOTE><P><A HREF="http://inq.philly.com/content/inquirer/2001/12/16/arts_and_entertainment/mess16.htm" TARGET=_blank><B>MORE...</B></A><P>