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Friday, October 17, 2025

The Music Comes Round and Round


YOU WILL COME AWAY from this book with no doubt about Alex M. Stein’s love for his favored music. In fact, no matter how fervent a music-lover you may think yourself, the 40 essays contained herein may cause you to question your own depth of passion.

Stein’s talent has been realized and honed through years of professional writing and theater-making. He often performs his stories before an audience, and I’m guessing it’s this that gives his prose appealing contours of rhythm and an engaging mellifluousness. He uses judicious repetition of words and phrases which, along with such tools as assonance and alliteration, reveal the poetry lurking within these pieces.

There’s a commonality among those who obsess early on about music. At least those of, as we say, a certain age. Physical possession was important. If your obsession began in the LP days, you stockpiled records, both latest releases and elusive antiques. Your ears, ever-alert to nuance, treasured the differences a single song could display across a number of performances, even (or especially) by the same ensemble.

But most profound are the emotional associations created by the confluence of song and event. Stein’s musical universe, inadequately defined as “rock ‘n’ roll,” is far enough away from mine that I feared I’d have no commonality with his book. Until I read, in the Introduction, “If you’ve ever been dumped by someone and found you can no longer stand the music you associate with them, you’re definitely my people,” and realized that, no matter the music, we have grounds for bonding.

Friday, October 10, 2025

Speaking in Tongues

AS A LIFELONG CAT PERSON, I am most comfortable when my beast of the moment is snoozing on the nearby chair or prowling the house and yard for snacks, or just sitting nearby, staring into the middle distance. Whenever I catch her at that (and my cats, over the sixty-some years I’ve had them, almost always were female), she doesn’t even acknowledge my gaze by meeting my eye but busily commences grooming, often comically sitting on her haunches and bending into positions that cause my back to ache merely through looking. A few swipes of tongue over fur and then she glances my way, asking, “And what’s the big deal, Sparky?”

We fare well together, these cats and I. I make no big deal of this pet preference, having long believed it speaks for itself. Evidently, however, it hasn’t spoken to my daughter. 

Two years ago, Lily decided she needed a dog. Another dog, to put it correctly. The one that had been in residence for several year, a black Lab, had health-declined so badly so quickly that we had to pull the plug. A process I hate, yet one in which I’ve participated at the end of the life of nearly every pet I’ve had for the past forty-or-so years. 

“I’ve had enough of it,” I declared. “I’ve played Charon to too many of our four-legged friends.” Undermining my cause a little, I fear, because my daughter interprets any flowery language to mean that I’m out of my mind (or more so than usual) and not to be taken seriously. Seeing her skeptical moue, I reiterated: “No more dogs!”

Friday, October 03, 2025

Dinner at the Family Manse

From the Food Vault Dept.: It’s the 25th anniversary of the review posted below, a review of a restaurant in Amsterdam, NY, that had been in business in its current incarnation for 17 years, and has surpassed that by remaining in business today. I’m sad to report that Vittorio Valentino died in August, but the family continues to operate the restaurant, and re-reading the review has me excited to visit the place again. The hours given are the current ones; as always, don’t expect current pricing to be anywhere near what’s reported below.

                                                                                      

VITTORIO AND ESTER VALENTINO struck me as about the sweetest couple I’ve ever come across in this business. When we dined at their restaurant on a recent Friday night, they and one of their sons were running the whole show, as far as I could see, and Ester seemed to know everybody else who was dining there. By the time we were through, she knew all about us, too, and we’d had a tour of the place from Vittorio.

In many respects, this could typify your friendly neighborhood Italian restaurant. But there are a couple of major differences. First is the location: It’s in a mansion, with a striking-looking tower that gave earlier restaurants their names. Second is Vittorio’s training, which includes a stint at the Cordon Bleu in Paris, which he attended while working for a diplomat’s family. 

Difference number two is more subtle in the context of the menu, which is classically Italian-American. A few French specials once graced the menu but, as Vittorio explains, his wife was still learning English at the time and the task of explaining them was too daunting. Now they have a following solidly grounded in the Italian food that’s featured, so I suspect they won’t be straying much from that menu. But I may ask for something French the next time I visit.

Friday, September 26, 2025

A Gamut of the Emotions

EUGENE YSAŸE was one of last of the virtuoso violinist-composers who dominated the late 19th century, but unlike Wieniawski and Vieuxtemps, he didn’t produce much in the way of the tuneful, show-offish morceaux that typically ended the concert recitals of the era. His works were thornier, more in keeping with the changes in the compositional atmosphere wrought by post-Wagnerians. Ysaÿe lived from 1858 to 1931 and began his concert career at the age of 27. A year later, César Franck wrote for him, as a wedding present, his renowned Violin Sonata. 

A recital by Joseph Szigeti that featured Bach’s Sonata No. 1 in G Minor for solo violin (one of six such pieces by Bach) inspired Ysaÿe to write his own set of six solo sonatas, which he finished in July 1923. They are comparatively short works, each of them dedicated to a different violinist of Ysaÿe’s acquaintance. While they aren’t aggressively tuneful, they reveal masterful writing, using the violin’s technical resources to the fullest. They probably are best appreciated by violinists, especially those courageous enough to take on the virtuosic demands. 

The sonatas usually are recorded as a set, which only makes sense, and there are over fifty such recordings. One of the latest features Roman Simovic, a visiting professor of violin at the Royal Academy of Music in London whose resume includes appearances with all the top orchestras in Europe as well as distinguished festivals galore. He directed the London Symphony String Orchestra on four albums for the LSO Live label, for which he also recorded Paganini’s 24 Caprices.

Friday, September 19, 2025

Have Another Look

Art Isn’t Easy Dept.: Just when you thought that the late John Updike had once and for all dropped his pen, along comes yet another weighty tome – this time a collection of Updike letters. But don’t be fooled by my glib nonsense: I’m looking forward to reading it, confident I’ll enjoy it, just as I’ve enjoyed every one of his previous books, all of which are on a nearby shelf in my house. Meanwhile, let’s revisit my review of one of his more unexpected literary ventures, that of art critic. The piece below explains the rest.

                                                                             

THE RANKS OF WELL-KNOWN cartoonist-writers include James Thurber and Lou Myers, but unlike Robert Hughes, who moved from cartooning to art criticism, or Ad Reinhardt, whose cartoons were criticism, John Updike never professionally pursued his own drawing ability. In that regard, he’s like the early-20th-century writer Booth Tarkington, whose sketches livened the horrible penmanship of his letters.

Both of them wrote about art late in their respective careers. Tarkington’s Some Old Portraits (1939) paid gossipy but insightful tribute to a selection of 18th-century works; the 23 essays in Updike’s first collection, Just Looking (1989), introduced us to a novelist unafraid to summon beautiful language to examine his relationship with the pre-Abstractionist world. From Vermeer in the 17th century to the still-living Richard Estes, the collection also gave a nod to cartoonists like Ralph Barton and fellow writer-cartoonists like Goethe, Poe, Oscar Wilde and Flannery O’Connor.

Another collection, Still Looking, followed in 2005, focusing on American art and covering such painters as Copley, Homer, Whistler, Hopper, Pollock and Warhol as well as photographer Alfred Stieglitz. After Updike died in 2009, enough uncollected essays remained for a final celebration. As a title, Always Looking tops the first two with its comforting, if Olympian, declaration of continuity; as an essay collection, it’s broader-based, but also solidifies the range of Updike’s favorites.

Friday, September 12, 2025

That Was the Tech That Was

From the Tech Archives Dept.: I found this pair of pieces in my archives and had a terrific laugh at the enthusiasm with which I celebrated what’s now obsolete in the first piece. The second is slightly less dated, but you’d be hard-pressed to find any of those mom-and-pop mail-order computer stores any more. 

                                                                                 

Format Wars

SMALL USUALLY WINS when you talk home electronics. Just as the cassette conquered reel-to-reel, so has the half-inch videocassette triumphed over the bulky open-reel jobs. Surprisingly, though, the tiny 8-millimeter format never caught on—or has yet to. It wasn't impressive enough its first time out to sway the market; whether any refinement lurks is as yet unpromised.

Navigating the shoals of videotape formats is a confusing proposition, especially for the novice. There are five or six of them to consider, depending how you wish to count, and each has its share of enthusiasts.

To get the abbreviations straight, a VCR is a video cassette recorder: it can record from and playback through a television. They start at about $200, discounted, although you can save a few bucks by buying a video cassette player, which has no record capability. You’re then at the mercy of your local video rental store.

Tuesday, September 02, 2025

The Stokowski Nobody Knew

HAVING TOILED IN THE TRENCHES of journalism for over forty years (albeit the more rarefied trenches of classical music, theater, and other cultural events), I like to think that I can manage sufficient objectivity to deal with anything I’m asked to cover. I may have strong opinions, sure, but I try to position myself as an open-minded audience representative. 

But I can promise no such objectivity in dealing with Nancy Shear’s new book I Knew a Man who Knew Brahms, and I’ll explain why after some introductory matter.

Nancy Shear Arts Services, founded in 1978, provides career consulting and public-relations services to musicians, and have worked and continue to work with a very distinguished roster. Shear herself has taught at New York University and The New School, been orchestra librarian with the Philadelphia Orchestra and the Curtis Institute, and has worked with a number of publishing companies in different capacities. She’s also a broadcaster who has been heard on WNYC, WHYY, and NPR, in the course of which she has conducted hundreds of interviews with star musicians.

Her memoir, however, chronicles her life in the years before she founded her agency, and it’s a fascinating, superbly written coming-of-age saga. It pulled me along not just through her skill at telling a good story but also because of the compelling commonality I discovered.

In 1960, Leopold Stokowski led a Philadelphia Orchestra concert at the Robin Hood Dell, an outdoor amphitheater in Philadelphia (now known as the Mann Center for the Performing Arts). Fourteen-year-old Nancy Shear, a resident of suburban Philadelphia, attended the event. She was enthralled by every aspect of it, from the orchestra tuning, to the sight of Stokowski waiting in the wings, to the program itself, which featured major works by Berlioz, Ravel, Debussy, and Shostakovich, among others.