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: schumann
Esa-Pekka Times Three
People I know were delighted when they learned, a couple of years ago, that Esa-Pekka Salonen had agreed to take over the leadership of the San Francisco Symphony. I too would have been delighted if I had known then what … Continue reading
Two in a Row
This past weekend was rather incredible. On Friday night I attended a chamber music concert at Carnegie Hall‘s Zankel auditorium that featured my favorite violinist in the world, Christian Tetzlaff. And on Saturday night—again at Carnegie, but this time in … Continue reading
Rattle’s Berlin Philharmonic
A great deal of what I know about music, it turns out, has accrued to me over the years through my attendance at Simon Rattle’s performances with the Berlin Philharmonic. When I first arrived in Berlin in 2003, Rattle had only recently taken … Continue reading
Great Performers
In this wintry New York spring, I have thus far managed to attend two Great Performers concerts at Lincoln Center. Both of them, not at all to my surprise, completely lived up to the series name. The first, on March 28, featured my favorite … Continue reading
Carnegie Hall
Sometimes I think that my main reason for spending a lot of time in New York is Carnegie Hall. The city boasts many other attractions: great dance performances, occasional good theater, several opera companies (including some very good small ones), excellent … Continue reading
A Stupendous Saturday
Living in a place like Berkeley, one can sometimes feel deprived of great music, as if it is all happening somewhere else, in the great capital cities of the world. But I have never, in New York or London or Berlin, had … Continue reading
Leila Josefowicz at Zankel
I first learned about Leila Josefowicz eight years ago, shortly before she won her MacArthur award, and because I was working on Shostakovich at the time, I acquired her recording of his notoriously difficult Violin Concerto No. 1. It was a knockout, and I resolved … Continue reading
Pacifica Perfection
It’s no secret that the Pacifica Quartet is my favorite string quartet in the world, and this means I take every opportunity to see and hear them play. Yet as their September 30 date at Rockefeller University approached, I had my doubts. … Continue reading