Berlin music
fromThe New Yorker
1 day agoMad About the Mandolin
Returning to music later in life can evoke nostalgia and joy, but also presents challenges in technique and progress.
"When I see this, I'm thinking hallelujah. It's the first real indicator that the VA is willing to step up and get that chapel restored, which frankly I think is their responsibility."
The design by 1Y Architects approaches this silence as material rather than absence. Instead of clearing the debris scattered across the site, the team gathered bricks, concrete fragments, and broken tiles from former factory buildings. These remnants form the structural fabric of the sound museum itself.
Wright created a sculptural masterpiece, but he was pushing the boundaries of residential construction. He didn't put enough reinforcing steel in the cantilevers of the house over the waterfall, so as soon as they removed the formwork, the house started to sag. Wright was always assuring the Kaufmanns it was natural, but it was the house failing.
Charles-Valentin Alkan was undoubtedly one of the great composers of his day. Chopin, his friend and one-time nextdoor neighbour, was an enthusiastic admirer, while Liszt cited Alkan as the only person in whose presence he felt nervous performing. Many of his keyboard works are notoriously difficult to play, yet all are immaculately crafted.
The Keller is profitable, popular, and central to downtown's recovery. It is time to stop the time-wasting charade and make a decision that reflects fiscal responsibility and the will of Portlanders.
In 1965, an electrifying debate took place at the Cambridge Union Society. The speakers were James Baldwin, an acclaimed American novelist and civil rights activist, and William F. Buckley Jr., a conservative intellectual. The motion debated was 'The American Dream is at the expense of the American Negro'. The overflowing hall was packed to the rafters. Baldwin won the debate by 544 votes to 164. 60 years have passed, yet it echoes down the decades with issues raised still relevant today.
The charming Amersham fairground organ museum, which is usually open a few Sundays per year, has now started offering guided tours. The occasional open days are more a chance to sit and listen to the old fair organs playing their pipes, and have a nice lunch at the same time. However, the guided tours, which will take place on Saturdays, will offer a deeper dive into their collection of organs and the music cards that control them.
The sheet is modest in size but immense in significance. Carefully inked across the page are the opening 20 bars of a fugue - not Mozart's own invention, but his transcription of a harpsichord work by George Frideric Handel, composed more than sixty years earlier. Mozart was 26 when he set to work on it in 1782-83, transforming Handel's keyboard fugue into the beginnings of a string quartet arrangement.