War profiteers stole two elections and screwed Iraq's pooch, but at least string theory's on track to explain physical reality... … [Read more...]

"In the film [Lust, Caution] moderately scrutable orientals play inscrutable orientals pretending to be inscrutable orientals..."--Michael Wood in the London Review of Books … [Read more...]

[it's been THAT KIND of week...] from The Human Stain, by Philip Roth 312-13 [Adagio from Third Symphony to close Coleman Silk's funeral...] That was it. They pulled out all the stops. They played Mahler. Well, you can't listen to Mahler sometimes. When he picks you up to shake you, he doesn't stop. By the end of it, we were all crying... One moment we were immobilized by the infinite vulnerability of Mahler's adagio movement, by that simplicity that is not artifice, that is not strategy, that unfolds, it almost seems, with the accumulated pace … [Read more...]

from The Human Stain, by Philip Roth pp. 209-210 Then Bronfman appears. Bronfman the brontosaur! Mr. Fortissimo! Enter Bronfman to play Prokofiev at such a pace and with such bravado as to knock my morbidity clear out of the ring. He is conscpiuously massive through the upper torso, a force of nature camouflaged in a sweatshirt, somebody who has strolled into the music shed out of a circus where he is the strongman and who takes on the piano as a ridiculous challenge to the gargantuan strength he revels in. Yefim Bronfman looks less like the … [Read more...]

My review of Levon Helm's Dirt Farmer aired this week on NPR's Here and Now. … [Read more...]

Part 3 (part one, two) EP: Do I get paid for these gems? If so, I charge by the word!!! TR: You sound like a writer. EP: In my estimation Horowitz recorded better due to his being a more sound oriented pianist. Also his virtuosity was more electrifying than Serkin's. I heard Horowitz live only once and Serkin many times. I was able to hear Horowitz's color in his recordings. Serkin was not a colorist and his impact was so much due to his power that it was rare for a recording to capture that. > "...Ormandy refused to allow me to play the … [Read more...]