Posts published by “David Yearsley”

There are two approaches to watching the Olympics—and to listening to them. The first is to sail over the contradictions of the Games like you’ve launched from the ninety-meter jump: lean out over your skis,…

...the unsavory vision of Bob Dylan sliding into Chevrolet’s latest sedan and gurgling patriotic garbage about American pride above ambient guitar chords

This nimble little falsettist of a Mars turns out not to fit the traditional image of war-loving deity that his stage-name suggests.

I first came to Berlin in 2003, just after the great Claudio Abbado, who has died this week in Bologna, had passed the baton to Simon Rattle after more than a dozen years at the helm of the Berlin Philharmonic. While living in Berlin, I had the chance to hear Abbado only once in what turned out to be his penultimate visit as guest conductor to the Philharmonie, one of the world’s greatest concert halls of any era, and proof that warmly welcoming and imaginative public buildings could be created in the harsh climate of the Cold War and, almost literally, in the shadow of the Iron Curtain.