Waldstein's galerij
Several volumes have been quite enough for Alex to proclaim Somerset Maugham, a trifle rashly perhaps, the greatest master of the short story the English language has ever seen.…
Alex is currently exploring the Penguin Classics shelf. He is not likely to be bored in the diverse company of Edward Gibbon, William Shakespeare, Oscar Wilde, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Jane…
Alex and Adolf. (Lest any misunderstanding should arise, it must be stressed that Alex is merely reading John Toland's fascinating biography.)
Alex is currently studying music theory. Amazing stuff! Is it really true, he wonders, that the difference between major and minor scales is a mere semitone? If so, it seems that Sainte-Beuve and…
Alex, Lenny and Christa, shortly before performing the Jeremiah Symphony with the Israel Philharmonic in Berlin, 1977.
Alex dreams of going to New York. Until that happens, if ever, "Rhapsody in Blue" and "West Side Story" will have to do - even when incongruously recorded with the LAPO.
Alex and Harold Schonberg, the most pugnacious (and the most perceptive!) music critic since Bernard Shaw.
To read, or not to read - that is the question; Whether 'tis nobler to ignore in mind Robin's rants Or to take the keyboard against his gossipy pen And by opposing him expose his vile…
Alex is currently reading The Dyer's Hand by W. H. Auden, a beautifully written and extremely thought-provoking collection of essays.
Alex is currently reading The Song of Hiawatha by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow.
Alex is such a computer geek, that I have virtually no access to the laptop. As you might divine, he spends most of his time in LibraryThing...
Alex is currently playing the piano works of Maurice Ravel: real finger-breakers, or hoof-breakers in his case...
Alex on yet another Clarkian quest. In the process he has developed a strange passion for old paperbacks with dashing covers.
Alex really enjoys the selected non-fiction writings of Arthur Clarke. But he is a little offended by the title. After all, what's wrong with the carbon-based quadrupeds, such as horses for instance?
Alex is perfectly dismayed at the abridged edition of Of Human Bondage done, or at least sanctioned, by Maugham himself.
Alex has just finished reading Somerset Maugham's Of Human Bondage which he immediately declared to be a supreme masterpiece.
Alex is currently reading Roger Vaughan's stylishly written biographical portrait of Herbert von Karajan.
It is a truth universally acknowledged - that it is not only Jane Austen who causes reading addiction. Willie Maugham does that too. Even when sunset makes reading dangerous for his delicate eyes,…
Alex dreams of going to Finland, Minnesota. As for the European Finland, he is convinced that a bottle of Finladia will do very nicely.
Alex finds it really difficult to believe that such a vast body of musical criticism (on the right) and drama (on the left) was actually written by the same man. Yet it happens to be true.
The first meeting between Alex and Bertrand Russell was a pretty stormy one. But since then he has come to appreciate Lord Russell's writings, perhaps because of the huge amount of horse sense they…
Alex is currently reading the monumental study of Tchaikovsky's life and music by David Brown. So we three - he, I, and David - have lots of fruitful/fruitless (it depends on the occasion)…
Alex has undergone a most spectacular religious transformation. He is now a zealous follower of Jesus Christ and more or less an ardent Catholic.