August 8, 2026 We were treated to a performance by the Orchestra Regionale Filarmonia Veneta last night in Rovigo’s handsome Piazza Vittorio Emanuele, part of a concert called Rossini nel cuore, held in honor of Rossini, a much-loved local cat who had recently died. The program naturally leaned toward the music of Gioachino Rossini, the composer whose name …
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Strathmore, July 24, 2026 • 7:30 p.m. A few notes on last night’s Rachmaninoff concert: I barely made it there, avoid the crushing Beltway. and taking a slow, but pleasant, drive through the Palisades There was a good Friday night turnout, better than the Sunday matinee I previous attended, and there seemed to be a …
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Holy Trinity Catholic Church, GeorgetownJuly 21, 2026 • 7:00 p.m. Last night saw a series of bravura performances by a talented group of young people at Georgetown’s Holy Trinity Church courtesy of Wolf Trap Opera’s Studio Artists. The Georgetown church itself was part of the experience: its chamber-like acoustics were nearly an additional instrument, amplifying …
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Symphony No. 1 in E-flat major, K. 16 (Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart) Piano Concerto No. 12 in A major, K. 414 (Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart) Encore: To the Spring (An der Frühling), Op. 43, No. 6 (Edvard Grieg) Symphony No. 1 in C major, Op. 21 (Ludwig van Beethoven) The Baltimore Symphony Orchestra’s Sunday afternoon program paired …
Prova Aperta March 8, 2009 Originally published in Pinball People, March 2009, and re-posted here. Carl Maria von Weber Oberon, Ouverture Felix Mendelssohn-Bartholdy Concerto in E minor, opus 64 for violin and orchestra Robert Schumann Symphony no. 4 in D minor, opus 120 It’s rare that one gets to see the workings of an orchestra …
1 February 2009 Quartetto d’archi della Scala Giacomo Puccini, Crisantemi, elegia per quartetto Giuseppe Verdi, Quartetto in mi min. per archi Giuseppe Verdi, Antologia da “Rigoletto”, arranged for strings by A. Melchiori This originally appeared in Pinball People in February 2009; I’m re-posting here. I was a bit skeptical about going to see a string …
Barns at Wolf Trap • Saturday, June 27, 2026 • 7:30 p.m. As we head towards American 250, I will concede that the Barns at Wolf Trap might be an appropriate setting for Rossini’s La Cenerentola, although I’d have preferred the Kennedy Center. Part of the larger Wolf Trap complex, the performance took place in …
I came across an essay almost a year old by one Mattias Desmet called “The De-Souling of the World.” It ends with these lines: “This revolution essentially boils down to this: a society led by a propagandized mass is replaced by a society led by a group of people connected through sincere speaking. […] What …
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Recent events — or the media imagery thereof — put in my mind an old Thomas Pynchon article, “Is It O.K. To Be A Luddite?” from nearly forty years ago. There’s a photo that could go with this, but it’s far too obvious, so you’ll have to settle for Kong. For readers interested in the …
Every year during my childhood, our post box was graced with an 80 page volume of one of the World Book’s Christmas Around the World series, a gift, I think, from my globetrotting grandparents. Although somewhat dated and with some breathlessly misleading information (the Spain entry insists that Spaniards eat loads of turkey for Navidad, …
