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 …
Author Archives: hnbjr
La Scala
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 …
La Cenerentola
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 …
Language, Sincerity and Authenticy in the Machine Age
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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Big and Bad
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 …
Christmas Around the World
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, …
On Neutrality and Great Powers
From Henry Adams’ Education of Henry Adams: Minister Adams felt the same compulsion. He bluntly told Russell that while he was “willing to acquit” Gladstone of “any deliberate intention to bring on the worst effects,” he was bound to say that Gladstone was doing it quite as certainly as if he had one; and to …
Rebutting Radical Chic…nella Cucina Italiana
In a fit of radical chic, the Financial Times published Marianna Giusti’s interview with Marxist academic Alberto Grandi, in which the latter “debunks” (a popular activity these days) Italian food traditions, most of which are admittedly as new as Italy’s prosperity. It’s not a difficult task to take on if one has read more than …
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Long Live the Experimental Pollen
Back in 1996, fans of lo-fi music, Crain, and Louisville’s particular brand of homegrown rock might’ve been following Experimental Pollen, a short-lived Jon Cook project. As it looked like Crain was about to split up, that small community might’ve paid particular attention to what a possible Crain follow-up would be. Experimental Pollen had a pretty …
M&M Enterprise Cooking, Vol. XIX
Here’s a pre-Thanksgiving Day meal complete with primo, secondo and contorno. I was most excited about the contorno and had been squirreling away supplies from the dining facility for some time for it. The primo, a dish more suited to Italy’s hot summers, came out surprisingly well, and the primo, a simple soup, rounded it …