A new documentary about Shostakovich is available online on @ARTEen from today, the date marking the 50th anniversary of the composer's death.
Shostakovich, Symphony in Red, examines the life and work of the innovative Russian composer, who left a breathtaking body of work. 1/2
You will never live if you are looking for the meaning of life. Fall in love with some activity and do it! Nobody ever figures out what life is all about and it doesn't matter.
- R. Feynman
Friends always meant much to him. They were the cast of a private mythology, each with his immutable sum of characteristics; several, subtly changing on the way, wandered in and out of his books in various disguises.
— Paddy Leigh Fermor, recalling his old friend, Larry Durrell
Fritz Kreisler b otd 150 years ago! Great man, great artist - if somewhat unorthodox in his methods: 'I am of the opinion that a master musician is he that does not practise at all... 3 minutes' immersion of the hands in hot water is as good as three hours' practice.' Hmm...!
@DurrellSociety Durrell was nominated for the Nobel in Literature for the Alexandria Quartet. But instead it went to that staid old right-thinker, John Steinbeck. Just saying'
What a loss to music! He seemed to specialize in making the audience think he had gotten lost in a solo only to remind the audience, at the solo's end, of how incredibly found he was —a quality I don't remember in his father's playing. https://t.co/GAQI5KSGGx
This is a one-of-a-kind recording I began 50 years ago and completed earlier this year. It's a science fiction rock opera about science fiction rock operas. I promise [a] nothing else exists like it and [b] it's damn good. https://t.co/EqyLxFfTSq
Human character? I imagine that what we call personality may be an illusion, and in thinking of it as a stable thing we are trying to put a lid on a box with no sides.
Human beings are really walking question marks — hows and whys and perhapses.
— Lawrence Durrell
Just back from London, Athens, Edinburgh, Orkney, and Midgely [nr: Halifax]. Tim Moon interviewed me in North Yorkshire. Says Tim: "If you go to https://t.co/I4nSO5ik4d look for Listen Again, specialist programmes. It’s Folk Us! Monday 9pm. Should be there for 50 days."
"Dark" Durrell, Saturday, 6th July
David Nigel Lloyd, Folksinger "The Dark Anvil of the Heart: A Folk Singer's Appreciation of Lawrence Durrell’s Struggle with Nothingness" Chair: Paul Lorenz, University of Arkansas at Pine Bluff
"Dark" Durrell, 6 July
"There's a certain Slant of light": Slanting Perspectives Chair: Paul Lorenz, University of Arkansas at Pine Bluff David Nigel Lloyd, Folksinger
"The Dark Anvil of the 1/3