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: carnegie hall
This Past Month or So
It’s a truism, I suppose, that there is no such thing as listening objectively to music. But criticism is somehow built on the idea that the critic is doing exactly that—bringing her expertise to bear on the sounds emerging from … Continue reading
A Welcome Visit from the Danes
Sometimes I think I organize my geographical existence around the concert schedule of the Danish String Quartet. This is not actually true. What is true is that I once flew from California to New York to catch their Beethoven cycle … Continue reading
Czechs, Etc.
This week the Czech Philharmonic came to Carnegie Hall for three concerts in a row, and so did a huge number of Czechs. You could distinguish them from the normal Carnegie denizens because a) they were all dressed up—the men … Continue reading
Youth and Age
It’s always great to return to Carnegie Hall with a bang, and I certainly got that thrill last week. I was able to attend two amazing concerts with two days of each other, each exemplifying something completely different about the … Continue reading
Open Season
Every year, when I arrive in New York in early September, I always forget that it’s going to be another month or so before I can regularly start attending the concerts I love. Carnegie Hall, the New York Philharmonic, and the … Continue reading
A Thrilling Wozzeck
I’ve attended at least four other productions of Alban Berg’s marvelous opera, and all but one have been excellent. It’s almost a sure thing, if you have good enough singers, competent musicians, and a simple enough staging. That’s the only … Continue reading
A Reopened Carnegie Hall
On Thursday night I took a friend to Carnegie Hall to hear Leonidas Kavakos and Yuja Wang play a concert of Bach, Busoni, and Shostakovich. My friend hadn’t heard live music in nearly two years, and she was utterly thrilled to be back … Continue reading
The last time I was at the Met…
Since the Metropolitan Opera—not to mention the Metropolitan Museum and anything else with Metropolitan or New York or City in its title—is on indeterminate hiatus during the current crisis, I thought I would reflect on the last opera I saw … Continue reading