Peter Schickele is a fine composer, who happens to be cursed with a sense of humor. Since you don't usually find the words “humor” and “classical music” in the same sentence, Schickele has spent 40 years channeling his comic urges into his alter ego, PDQ Bach. Described as “the last and least of Bach's sons,” PDQ is the most hilariously inept composer ever to set quill to parchment. Every so often Schickele emerges with his recent “discoveries” of … well, let's call it music. And in A Little Nightmare Music, Schickele ignores the desperate pleas of music lovers everywhere by adding to the catalogue of PDQ Bach recordings.

This album is perhaps not PDQ's finest hour (that would be, by universal acclaim, the hour of his death), but it'll keep eMusic fans happy until The 1712 Overture and Oedipus Tex and the rest of Schickele's madcap recordings become available. Schickele's humor is broad enough that you don't need to be a classical music expert to enjoy the fun… but the more you know about it, the funnier the performances are. Inappropriate “borrowings” from eerily familiar sources (how would PDQ have heard ragtime back then?) are ineptly thrown together in the “Octoon.”… read more »