Posted in Life and culture, Memory Lane, Music, People, Politics on Sep 20th, 2007 3 Comments »
[Several fans of Richter - does my personal involvement distort my own impression that the music world, especially music-lovers, have meanwhile come around to regarding him as the preëminent pianist of his time? - have for years urged me to make generally available again the story of his reunion with his mother the summer of [...]
Posted in Commonplace Book, Life and culture, People, Reflections on Sep 19th, 2007 No Comments »
With me, for example - and the rest of us blogniks.
I’ve previously mentioned Ol’ Eagle-Eye Perry Nelson here, my Knoxville, Tennessee blogfather who virtually whupped me into opening this rumpus room. I’ve known Perry for years as a virtually infallible fountain of wisdom when it comes to what my fellow Germans call Informatik - or, [...]
Posted in Life and culture, Memory Lane, Music, People on Sep 17th, 2007 No Comments »
For not years but decades I’ve intended to research the transformation into this famous pianist-teacher from li’l ol’ Lucie Hickenlooper, born in li’l ol’ San Antone Texas, and my recent stroll down Memory Lane in tribute to her Juilliard pupil William Kapell has finally, finally goosed me into doing it.
In 1958, Time-Life International sent me [...]
Posted in Life and culture, Memory Lane, Music, People on Sep 17th, 2007 3 Comments »
[For some time now, I've had a short book of very personal memoirs about the great Russian pianist Sviatoslav Richter on my mind, and my blogfather Perry Nelson, the sage and techno-wizard of Knoxville, Tennessee, has done his best to pound it into my head that I'd do the really hip thing if I'd get [...]
Posted in Letter from Berlin, Life and culture, People, Politics, Reflections on Sep 16th, 2007 No Comments »
Friends of mine have had a tough time with my recent naturalization as a full-fledged (albeit Texas-born) citizen of the Bundesrepublik Deutschland - the Federal Republic of Germany, the emphatically democratic successor of the Nazis’ ineffably hideous self-proclaimed “Thousand-Year Reich” - which in fact ceased to exist after only twelve, wiped out of existence by [...]
Posted in Life and culture, Memory Lane, Music, People, Politics on Sep 16th, 2007 2 Comments »
Mention the little un-iced pastry known in France as une madeleine and anyone familiar with literature thinks immediately of Marcel Proust, whom the sight and taste of a madeleine dipped in tea launched on a protracted stroll down his own Memory Lane that gave the world the great multi-volume autobiographical novel for which he borrowed [...]
Posted in Letter from Berlin, Music, People on Sep 14th, 2007 1 Comment »
In einem ungewöhnlich langen Interview mit dem Berliner Tagesspiegel schiesst Cecilia Bartoli wirklich los:
” . . . Ich habe eine enge Bindung zu dem [Opernhaus in Rom], wegen meiner Eltern und weil ich hier als Achtjährige den Hirten in Puccinis Tosca gesungen habe. Aber um die römische Oper zu retten, reicht eine Person nicht aus, [...]
Posted in Letter from Berlin, Memory Lane, Politics on Sep 14th, 2007 1 Comment »
During my years as a gung-ho Parisian Left-Banker (1949-51) - complete with full beard, beret basque, British Army surplus duffel-coat, and a grungy little walk-up hotel room that cost me $1 a night at those days’ black-market rate (and where, the New York girl who’d preceded me to Paris and got me installed there assured [...]
Posted in Letter from Berlin, People on Sep 13th, 2007 No Comments »
“We are discussing the possibility of several millions.” At least in this account the young Berlin lawyer Ariane Bluttner doesn’t specify Germany’s official Euro currency, as a member of the European Union, but at the prevailing fluctuating rate that would mean substantially more than even several million mere U.S. dollars.
Bluttner, a comparative legal neophyte with [...]
Posted in Events, Life and culture, Music, People on Sep 13th, 2007 No Comments »
If anyone reading this still thinks riches mean happiness, just consider the fate of the great (in more senses than one) operatic tenor Luciano Pavarotti, who died last week, and think again. He left an estate estimated in the neighborhood of half a billion (repeat: Billion) dollars - i.e., $500,000,000 - and an interview published [...]
Ich bin ein [Texas-Born] Berliner
Life, people, and Kultur
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