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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Author Archives: Wendy Lesser
Berlin Diary
I was in Berlin for nearly three weeks, so you’re not going to hear about everything I saw or heard. You won’t, for instance, hear about the Telemann Death of Jesus performed with a twenty-first-century Requiem, nor the piano recital accompanied … Continue reading
Interval
Apologies for the long gap between my last post, on January 19, and this one. My excuse, if you need one, is that there was not enough to write about in February, and far too much in March and early … Continue reading
Dramatic Music
Two different kinds of dramatic music were paired at last weekend’s San Francisco Symphony concerts, and both were a success, though in very different ways. One had plot, characters, words, even narration—a veritable orgy of theatrical elements. The other, though … Continue reading
SoundBox
There’s a wonderful new place to listen to music in San Francisco, and it’s called SoundBox. Formerly an acoustically dead rehearsal area at the back of Davies Hall, it has been transformed through the miracles of deconstructed architecture, rock-concert lighting, … 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
A Dreamlike Alcina
Ever since I saw an incredible production of Handel’s Alcina at the San Francisco Opera about a dozen years ago, it has been one of my very favorite operas. I listen to the CDs all the time (I have the … Continue reading
Simon’s Band
I first came to love music, I mean really love music, by listening to the Berlin Philharmonic during a semester spent in Berlin. I was an avid fan that whole fall, not only attending every concert I could get tickets … Continue reading
Tetzlaff’s Triumph
David Hume says somewhere in his philosophical works that you can’t be proud of the Pacific Ocean—the idea being that you need to have some sense of relationship or ownership to warrant pride, and no one can own the Pacific … Continue reading
Glass and Reich
Perhaps the most interesting thing about hearing the music of Philip Glass and Steve Reich together—as last week’s three concerts at the Brooklyn Academy of Music allowed New Yorkers to do—is the discovery of how very different they are. It’s … Continue reading
Up Close
I have always loved the Pacifica Quartet, but I have never before listened to them play from five feet away. Last night, sitting in the front row of the Cosentino Winery’s barrel room, I was practically as close to the … Continue reading