Posted in Events, Letter from Berlin, Life and culture, Memory Lane, Music, People, Politics on Sep 30th, 2007 No Comments »
When I went over into eastern Berlin Sunday night to cover a premiere at the grand old State Opera on Berlin’s showpiece boulevard named Unter den Linden (because of the quadruple columns of trees marching down the center separator green strip, I had to take the subterranean U-Bahn because yesterday I got a call from [...]
Posted in Events, Letter from Berlin, Life and culture, Music, People on Sep 28th, 2007 No Comments »
Volker Hagedorn, the music critic of our classy Hamburg-based weekly newspaper Die Zeit, visited Henze at his home above the Tiber valley in Italy, where he composed Phaedra, his newest opera, recently unveiled at Berlin’s Deutsche Staatsoper. Hagedorn reports:
Henze sat in the shade of the terrace gazing at the olive trees. He seems smaller than [...]
Posted in Life and culture, Memory Lane, Music, People on Sep 21st, 2007 1 Comment »
Thanks to a bit of virtuoso clipboardery I’ve whupped this philologically challenged provincial Californian software into replicating that pesky Danish/Norwegian fifth letter of Aksel Schiøtz’s surname, but in order to confuse and frustrate Googlers and surfers as little as possible I want, prophylactically, to zing in a version that’ll at least make this bloggery noticeable [...]
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 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 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 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 [...]
Posted in Commonplace Book, Events, Life and culture, Music, People, Politics, Reflections on Aug 31st, 2007 No Comments »
Immediately after Japan’s “sneak” (ha!) attack against Pearl Harbor, Pres. Franklin D. Roosevelt damned December 7th, 1941 as “a day that will live in infamy”.
I submit that his eloquent terminology also applies, for all time, to that entire abominable era in American history when the country’s administration totally forgot F.D.R.’s earlier assurance that “We [...]
Ich bin ein [Texas-Born] Berliner
Life, people, and Kultur
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