When it comes to piano scenes in movies I go for the kind that are keen to dismantle the homey myths that surround the instrument. In and around the seemingly impregnable bunker of the living…
Posts published by “David Yearsley”
I always find it curious when moderns harp on the of problem opera’s verisimilitude. Theorists of the genre began to grapple with such objections as soon as the genre was hatched as a rebirth of…
Entrusting the USA to its patroness, Mary Immaculate, then offering one final “God Bless America,” Pope Francis launched heavenward from Philadelphia on his Alitalia jet nearly two weeks ago. The diverse music that graced and…
Media coverage of Kelly Gissendaner’s execution in the small hours of Wednesday morning stressed the apparent anomalies of an act that, in this country, is hardly anomalous: that she was first woman to be killed…
Live long enough if you’re human, or stand long enough if you’re a building, and you’ll witness history overtake you. For the phenomenon to assume public form you must have attained some measure of fame…
It was not the tireless wind now being harnessed by Germany’s Energy Transition (Energiewende)—that same force discussed last week in this space—but the fires of internal combustion that sped us south, from Norden and its…
The northwest corner of Germany is called Ostfriesland and with respect to organs of recognized historic value it claims to be the most densely populated region of the world: there are nearly two hundred in an area the size of Rhode Island.
There are cranes everywhere in London, and not just down in the financial center, the City of London. Cranes crowd the south bank of the Thames and the north. They are upriver and downriver. No quadrant of the skyline is without them in large quantity.
Driving to Boston from Ithaca to give a concert at the venerable early music festival there last week, I decided to listen to a book on tape rather than my usual fare of pastoral symphonies…