Happy 102nd birthday, Leonard Bernstein!

His Candide Overture is perhaps the singular most joyful piece of brilliantly scattered, wickedly intractable music ever written, with its collision of overlapping themes; fearless jumps between walls of boisterous brass, swirls of tittering piccolos and swells of velvety strings; and headstrong, disobedient asymmetries that have no doubt awakened every conductor on the planet in cold sweats since 1956.

Here he is conducting his breathless juggernaut with the London Symphony Orchestra in 1989. I know the musicians know the music. I know HE knows the music. But I fail to see any sense of dialogue between them as he conducts. It makes ME break out in a cold sweat, so I can't watch.

You can watch at your own peril. But do take four and a half minutes to just listen.

Books: Thunderstruck, Erik Larson

I've now read THREE WHOLE BOOKS since quarantine started. This one I read solely because I’ve loved everything else I’ve ever read by Erik Larson—from his gorgeously crafted prose to his exhaustive research to the deft triangulations he creates as he weaves disparate stories closer and closer to each other until their inevitable collisions into single narratives.

That said, this book starts out a bit slow and takes a tedious amount of time to pick up steam. But along the way, it provides a nuanced, meaningful understanding of the history and culture of Edwardian England and the early rumblings of the First World War. It parallels the invention of wireless communication with a gruesome murder that was at the time the international crime of the century—all as Germany breathes down England’s neck and Western Civilization is caught up in a collective fascination with the supernatural.

Larson writes sentences that are so evocative and beautifully cast that I often stop and re-read them multiple times just to admire their balance of artistry, exposition, insight and construction. I even read this one aloud—with no helpful context—to my parents because I loved it so much: “In the great conspiratorial tradition of Englishwomen of title, she invited Marconi to the island as well, this time as a houseguest.”