Category Archives: Uncategorized

Whose Brahms?

Recently, I came across an essay entitled Whose Brahms Is It Anyway? Puzzling: I assumed Brahms, that most organic of composers, had been purchased by Monsanto long ago. This essay has an alarming thesis: that the Brahms B-flat Concerto has been getting longer. The author (Walter Frisch) does not [...]
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Schubert’s Killer Abs

At least Hester Prynne got an “A” for her adultery. I’ve searched the alphabet up and down, and I can’t find a letter to testify to my shame. Of all the sinful confessions of Think Denk, ranging from lonely Cheetos to promiscuous metaphors, this is the darkest and deepest. Here goes:         Monday [...]
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Chopin’s for Dummies

When I mention to people I’ve played Chopin on my recitals lately, I tend to get a curious reaction–a slightly sour look with a parental, passive-aggressive question mark swirling around in it. Oh, dear, really? From their oblique remarks I glean an implication: why would you play Chopin, since you are a [...]
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Missing me one place search another

Regular readers might recall, I won’t ever forget, that I went not so long ago to visit the composer Leon Kirchner, and he jokingly compared me to Walt Whitman. I hadn’t read Whitman’s verse since high school, and even at my hormonal heights, penning maudlin teen poetry by the rhyming bushel, I found him [...]
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