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
Art That Speaks to Us
On the first Thursday of October, I went to BAM to see the Berliner Ensemble production of The Threepenny Opera. Naturally my standards for this play are extremely high: the affinity I feel for it extends beyond its title to a number … Continue reading
Tetzlaff Times Three
In mid-March, as I was leaving the Carnegie Hall concert that Christian Tetzlaff had just given with the Boston Symphony Orchestra, I ran into a couple of friends. “Oh, we should have known we’d see you at this!” they said … Continue reading
My Shostakovich Book
I don’t generally favor using blogs for self-promotional purposes, but I have been persuaded that it would be a good idea to let my regular readers know that a book I have been working on for four years is finally … Continue reading
Seeing The Hard Nut Once Again
Mark Morris’s The Hard Nut is a Christmas confection, but I first saw it in the summer. It was August of 1995, and my husband and I and our ten-year-old son traveled north from London to catch the highlights of the … Continue reading
Edmund de Waal’s Hare
Every once in a while a book comes out that is so great, all you have to do is summarize the plot to hint at its greatness. It’s not that Edmund de Waal’s The Hare with Amber Eyes is a heavily plotted … Continue reading
Two More Canadian Shows
A while back I recommended Slings and Arrows as an alternative for those who were suffering Wire withdrawal, and as time has continued to burnish my memory of watching that great Shakespearean series, I feel even more strongly about it. But television-watchers … Continue reading
An Excess of Riches
A couple of weeks ago I went to a perfectly nice concert in Carnegie’s Weill Hall. It was the New York debut of a very talented young Scandinavian cellist named Andreas Brantelid, accompanied on the piano by the older and also … Continue reading
Bell & Jackiw
I know it sounds like the name of one of those semi-shady Dickensian firms of solicitors, but my title actually refers to the two star performers in last weekend’s events at Berkeley’s Zellerbach Hall. In two separate programs presented by Cal … 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
But Is It Opera?
This question was raised, in my own mind and that of several other audience members I spoke to, by the Metropolitan Opera’s admittedly terrific new production of Leos Janacek’s last operatic work, From the House of the Dead. Based on the Dostoyevsky … Continue reading