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
Looking at Art
All summer long, I’ve been waiting to see the four fascinating-sounding art shows that opened in New York while I was away. And now that I’m here, I’ve done so. The first two were at the Whitney: the cumulative Danny … Continue reading
Singing and Opera
I enjoyed the San Francisco Opera‘s new production of Janacek’s Jenufa—just not quite as much as all my friends said I would. They were right about the singing, which was beyond terrific. Karita Mattila as Kostelnicka, William Burden as Laca, … Continue reading
Terrible Movie, Great Concert
In the absence of any surer bet among the early summer offerings, I took a risk last Monday on a movie called The Lobster. After all, I love Colin Farrell and like Rachel Weisz, who were both featured actors in it (and … Continue reading
Filling Carnegie Hall
In the middle of April I heard three chamber-music concerts on the main stage of Carnegie Hall, and they were all, quite frankly, great. The first was the complete Brahms piano quartets, played by a dream ensemble that included Leif Ove … Continue reading
Four Quartets
Not T. S. Eliot’s, but real string-playing musicians. Over the course of less than a month, I recently had the opportunity to hear four first-class quartet groups who were visiting the Bay Area. The string quartet is a strange beast: … 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
Architecture
It’s true that I’m writing a biography of the architect Louis Kahn, so I’ve been looking closely at a lot of good architecture (mainly his) over the past few years. But recently I had a series of architectural adventures that had … Continue reading
Biss Bliss
There are certain performers whose concerts I will try to attend no matter what they are playing, and Jonathan Biss is definitely on the list. Last June I heard him in a Beethoven marathon with the San Francisco Symphony at Davies Hall; this … Continue reading