Notes and Essays -- John Brown

Although America was his refuge, Sergei Rachmaninoff maintained an annual presence in Europe, where he performed in prime concert halls.   By Norman Lebrecht, The Wall Street Journal , Dec. 29, 2023 11:53 am ET Sergei Rachmaninoff at the piano.   PHOTO:  LEBRECHT MUSIC ARTS/BRIDGEMAN IMAGES The pianist Arthur Rubinstein once found himself invited to dinner in Hollywood with the Rachmaninoffs and the Stravinskys. Russia’s greatest living composers had never met before, and conversation was monosyllabic. After a while Rachmaninoff started baiting Stravinsky about how much money he had lost when the Soviet government had seized all private copyrights, including those for “Petrushka” and “Firebird.” “What about your C# minor prelude and all those concertos?” cried Stravinsky. Rubinstein reports that they spent the rest of the evening happily comparing losses, united in a common history. “Goodbye Russia,” a biography of Rachmaninoff “in exile” by the British music critic Fiona...

By  Rabih Alameddine [JB: see  Wikipedia ] , The Washington Post ,  December 26, 2023 at 7:15 a.m. EST image  (inspired from words in the below article, but not from the article) Poets are the canaries in the world’s coal mines. Through the years, countless poets have been arrested for daring to sing their songs — most recently and publicly Mosab Abu Toha, a Palestinian poet  sending dispatches from Gaza . Every unhappy coal mine is unhappy in its own way. Some are so noxious, the canaries suffer from asthma and can no longer trill. Some are so poisonous, the canaries die by the bushel. And some canaries are snatched from the sky. Were I to write down the names of the poets arrested by the Soviet regime alone, we would run out of space in this newspaper. Consider this inexhaustive list of poets, caged: Ovid, Roman,  arrested/exiled  by the Roman Empire in 8 A.D. John Milton, English,  arrested  by the British Crown in 1660 Adam Mickiewicz,...

In 2023, many novelists found themselves stuck in the past.  By Sam Sacks Follow, The Wall Street Journal ,  Dec. 28, 2023 9:53 am ET   The historical novel, Henry James once declared, was a genre “condemned . . . to a fatal cheapness.” Throughout the 20th century, while historical fiction produced plenty of bestsellers, the literati tended, with grudging exceptions, to look down upon historical fiction as middlebrow escapism. It may seem odd, then, that the most noticeable trend among literary authors in 2023 was the embrace of this fusty old genre. Well-known authors and ambitious newcomers were engaged in the same endeavor: reflecting on the past, using it as a way to interpret the present.  In “Writing Backwards,” one of the year’s most trenchant (if jargon-heavy) literary studies, Alexander Manshel points to the importance of the canon debates that have roiled university literature and history departments since the 1970s. Historical novels, he notes, became...

At the Jewish Museum, the Argentine artist’s first American survey reveals the breadth of her vibrant creativity.  By Brian P. Kelly, The Wall Street Journal , Dec. 29, 2023 3:22 pm ET   Installation view of ‘Marta Minujín: Arte! Arte! Arte!’ at the Jewish museum, with ‘Intertwined Concepts’ in the foreground.  PHOTO:  THE JEWISH MUSEUM New York ‘Marta Minujín: Arte! Arte! Arte!” at the Jewish Museum lives up to its exclamatory title and is a vibrant celebration of the 80-year-old Argentine artist that sparkles with the many facets of her work. No small feat when considering a career that’s spanned six decades and ranges from sculpture and painting to performance, installation and happenings.  With almost 100 works, this first American survey of Ms. Minujín is a major corrective for those living stateside—a long overdue institutional introduction to a pioneer in textiles, a singular feminist voice, and an inveterate activist whose cheery projects have never mad...