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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Category Archives: The Lesser Blog
Klezmer at the Kammermusiksaal
Every once in a while, it makes sense to take a big gamble on unknown musicians. Occasionally the results can be disappointing, even annoying. But when they are good, they are well worth the risk. On Wednesday night, I hit … Continue reading
The Berlin Philharmonic
I always try, when I’m visiting Berlin, to start off the musical part of my stay with something especially good. This is not hard to do, since almost everything Berlin offers musically is good. But this time I appeared to … Continue reading
On Second Thought
Well, it turns out I’m not really the daily-posting type. Nothing of interest happened yesterday. I went to the one photography show I had picked out in advance, enticingly titled “Projections Onto the East,” but it turned out to be … Continue reading
Hooray for America! And onward to Berlin…
I had always planned to delay my November trip to Berlin until after the midterms, and wow, am I glad I did. To celebrate yesterday’s election results in the midst of my fellow citizens has been a joy beyond imagining. … Continue reading
Mozart and More Mozart
What could be nicer? Two nights in a row listening to Mozart at Carnegie Hall—first an intimate Zankel concert featuring Emmanuel Ax and The Knights, suitably adored by the assembled aficionados; next a solo recital by Yunchan Lim in the … Continue reading
3 x 18
In retrospect, I wonder what possessed me when I arranged to hear Steve Reich’s Music for 18 Musicians played three times in a row, over a three-and-a-half-hour span, at the Park Avenue Armory. Well, to be honest, I know what … Continue reading
Takács and Denk
Ah, to be back at Carnegie Hall! Like European aristocrats, intellectuals, and bohemians of the early twentieth century, I am privileged to participate in a Season, which really only gets started when I attend my first Carnegie concert of the … Continue reading
Proske’s Macbeth
Let me start by saying that the music was terrific. A number of times last night, as I sat watching Louisa Proske’s new production of Verdi’s Macbeth (now running at the Metropolitan Opera), I was struck by the beauty of … Continue reading
Tragedy and Celebration
I am at least as big a Gustavo Dudamel fan as the next person, as my years of positive reviews demonstrate. But enough is enough. The New York Philharmonic is now turning him into the poster boy for music—literally so … Continue reading
An Excerpt from Berlin Before and After
(I wanted to give you a little foretaste of the book that’s coming out on September 8.) They’re called Stolpersteine, or “stumble-stones,” but it’s not actually that easy to stumble on them. By this I mean not only that one … Continue reading