Words and Music

VALENTINA LISITSA HAS CHOPS, which she proved with recordings of works by Rachmaninoff and Liszt. You need that kind of technical ability wi...

From the Classical Vault Dept .: The mention I made a couple of days ago of Andy Stein’s arrangement of Gershwin’s “Summertime” reminded me...

At The Iguana, NYC | 24 March 2015 | Photo by B. A. Nilsson

The slow movement of Schubert’s “Death and the Maiden” Quartet presents its haunting theme (from the song that gives the work its title) as ...

Restaurants in Review Dept.: The Bull’s Head Inn closed in the middle of 2012 and changed hands the following January. The new owners are ...

From the Classical Vault Dept .: He was a first prize winner at the Naumburg International Competition and the first violinist to receive th...

Guest Blogger Dept .: By 1921, (Newton) Booth Tarkington was a Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist and a playwright with significant Broadway su...

Beethoven was impressed enough by Immanuel Kant’s tombstone epigraph – “There are two things which raise man above himself and lead to etern...

My Uncle Opal died two years ago. I haven’t kept in touch with my West Virginia relatives, whom I last saw over twenty-five years ago toward...

21 March 2015 | Photo by B. A. Nilsson

From the Back Pages Dept. : When I’m in the mood to dodge the strollers and my pocket is bulging with cash, I stop at Eataly. It’s a hugely ...

Guest Blogger Dept .: Mark Twain chronicled his adventures in the West, chasing gold, crossing Utah, working in San Francisco, and going on ...

From the CD Shelf Dept. : Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco wrote a version of “Largo al factotum” (from Rossini’s “Barber of Seville”) for Jascha H...

From the Theater Vault Dept. : I’m afraid I had it in for Ira Levin going into this piece, which I wrote six years after witnessing the horr...

My daughter will be on an airplane today flying over Siberia en route to Shanghai. This explains why the territory remains a popular flyover...

Speaking of Diners Dept. : And we were doing so just the other day, saluting Schenectady’s defunct Ruby’s . Happily, Jack’s Drive-In endures...

Guest Blogger Dept. : Much of P.G. Wodehouse’s early poetry was inspired by life events, as in the case of the case of Dodson vs. Forbes-Rob...

From the Food Vault Dept .: A mainstay of downtown Schenectady for so many years, Ruby’s Diner had a personality wonderful enough to make up...

From the KGB Files Dept .: I interviewed the legendary Natalia Sats twice, in 1986 (you can read it here ) and again two years later, which ...

From the Classical Vault Dept .: Each summer, Bard College devotes a slew of concerts and other activities to a single composer and the cont...