About
I decided to start a blog for three reasons:
1) People felt that there should be a part of the Threepenny website that was available only online, not in the printed magazine.
2) Some of the things I wanted to write about seemed as if they would benefit from a slightly more timely response than our usual quarterly publication permitted.
3) I was seeing and hearing so much interesting art — especially in the areas of dance and music, though also in literature, theater, and the visual arts — that I couldn't fit everything I wanted to say into The Threepenny Review without taking over the whole publication. And if you are not Diderot or Karl Kraus (and I am certainly neither), it is never a good idea to write the whole magazine yourself. But I figured the rules of blogs would allow me to monopolize one of those.
I struggled to come up with a good title for the blog and at first resisted using my own name, feeling (as those named Lesser are bound to feel) that diminishment is not necessarily a selling point. But then I figured that if people named Grudge or Drudge can use their names on websites, I should certainly not be abashed at calling this The Lesser Blog. So here it is, and I hope you enjoy it.
Wendy Lesser
Editor, The Threepenny Review-
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Tag Archives: chamber music society of lincoln center
Open Season
Every year, when I arrive in New York in early September, I always forget that it’s going to be another month or so before I can regularly start attending the concerts I love. Carnegie Hall, the New York Philharmonic, and the … Continue reading
Two Surprises
Though I’ve had some surprises from Music@Menlo in the past (most notably when they introduced the Danish String Quartet on these shores), I find myself attending their concerts mainly to have my high expectations fulfilled. Predictably excellent performances of good chamber … Continue reading
Igor Levit in San Francisco
For those of us in the Bay Area who care about classical music, the last two weeks have mainly been taken up with Igor Levit’s residency at the San Francisco Symphony. I wrote about this marvelous pianist last fall, after hearing him perform all … Continue reading
Glorious Shostakovich
I think the Fourth Symphony—which Shostakovich wrote after being castigated by Stalin for his opera Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk, and which as a result was pulled from its 1936 premiere and not performed until after Stalin’s death—might be my favorite of … Continue reading
Chamber Music
It is foolish to wade into the mild controversy currently surrounding the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, but I have never been afraid of appearing foolish. It kind of goes with the territory. The controversy, typical of our day and … Continue reading
Beethoven and the Danes
All concert attendance is a betting game, but some bets are riskier than others. Earlier this month, I bet on something I thought would surely pay off: I traveled to New York from California just to hear the Danish String … Continue reading
Shostakovich Redux
When you spend years writing a biography of a creative figure and thinking about everything he did, you might expect to be sick of him once the job is over. I thought I might be done with Shostakovich when I … Continue reading
Comparative Beethoven
A fascinating experiment is now underway at Alice Tully Hall. Under the auspices of the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, six different quartet groups have been enlisted to present all of Beethoven’s works for string quartet in the course of … Continue reading
In the Oddest Places
Over the past month, I’ve been finding the best music in places where I didn’t necessarily expect it, and less good music in places where I did. When this oddity occurred once, it didn’t seem worth remarking on, but now … Continue reading
A Month of Performances
It occurred to me that it would be useful to chronicle the live performances I saw in New York during just the past four weeks. March 2007 was not an unusual month, in that the number of events I attended … Continue reading