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barney

I was extremely worried by Republican intransigence over Ukraine aid. This is good to know, thans Joe. Proxy wars are ugly things, but it seem to me Russia must be stopped at the first hurdle.

barney

From The Age in Melbourne Despite Obama and Trump, America just proved it’s still the ‘indispensable power’ Peter Hartcher Peter Hartcher Political and international editor April 23, 2024 — 5.00am Save America’s credibility never has recovered from Barack Obama’s “red-line” ultimatum to Syria’s dict...

barney

Couldn't read it, Joe, as I'm not willing for them to use my data. Is it possible for you to paste it? I am concerned about preserving free speech, but I can't see Musk's case for posting live vision of a bishop being stabbed. As Oliver Wendell Holmes famously observed, free speech does not include ...

barney · Re: January 24, 2025 Yes, congratulations. Quite a thrill.

Yes, congratulations. Quite a thrill.

barney

Davis was chief conductor of the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra for years; I've interviewed him. A gregarious and funny man, who got on really well with the musicians. They loved him, even while finding him occasionally irritating.

barney

John Spooner used to be a quite a good friend at The Age. He is a brilliant cartoonist/illustrator. But with utter crap like this one, I wouldn't know what to say if I met him today.

barney

I'm criticising the credulous simplicity of Americans who think it's really clever and funny to find a news clip then introduce it by asserting the opposite. Even I could do that. And a lotta folks have tried ever since Jon Stewart basically invented parodic "fake news" as a comedy form some 28 yea...

barney

I'm not criticising his intelligence; I'm sure he's very bright. I'm criticising the credulous simplicity of Americans who think it's really clever and funny to find a news clip then introduce it by asserting the opposite. Even I could do that. And in the last clip that was posted here, that's all h...

barney

No they don't, Lance; obviously the question carries its own answer. The argument, which I don't accept, is that they put on a bit of lippy and stockings, say they are women, and, lo and behold, they are women. But the transgender activists - or many of them - are quite vicious. I'm not at all surpr...

barney

Rach3, Thanks for posting the concert. Here is the concert on Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MXs-1nG6-0E By the way, Hadelich is the victim of a terrible accident. When he was fifteen, a fire on his family farm burned much of his upper body, including his face and bowing arm. He lost a co...

barney

Hadelich is certainly highly rated. He's in Melbourne in a couple of months, and I have forked out for a ticket.

barney

Isn't it time for you two to agree not to talk to each other?
(Yes, I mean you, Joe and Belle.) It's getting uncomfortable. I know I can simply not read, but you both vary invective with interesting points, so I want the latter.

barney

Jon Stewart 15 April — Talking World War III Blues, Trump’s dementia, his drooling at his trial, the “Is he Jesus or Mandela?” debate, etc. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=NgeLRtpC2WI I don't really understand why this guy is so popular. His technique seems to be find a bit of news coverage, say the ...

barney

I saw these, too, Steve, and thought they were great. Didn't occur to me to post them here though. Good for you.

barney

Great name for an author.

barney

It is fascinating to hear from the pseudo-libertarian Right on this healthcare issue. They are the offspring of the very gaggle that bitterly opposed Medicare in the twentieth century and then savaged Obama/Pelosicare in the twenty-first. They now presumptively proffer a fix for the real inequities...

barney

There will be a large amount of CYA (cover your a*se) going on. I'm just pleased he wasn't a Muslim terrorist - things are bad enough on Muslim-Jewish (and others) tensions right now.

barney

Yes, lovely piece, thanks.

barney

I bought 37 of the two CD sets as they came out, then found the whole 100 in the two boxes, new, for NZ $537 (about $400 US, I think). They weren't that cheap in Oz. I never regretted that! A while ago Lance posted that he'd seen the whole lot on eBay for US$4000, but it's irrelevant - I'll never se...

barney

Interesting to watch Yuja in these clips. I've never seen her use music whilst playing live though unless it's a chamber music recital. About whether artists risk the clamour of the audience, I think it gives them even more power to be successful and precise especially when traversing a major, virt...

barney

I loved that Four Last Songs. I spent a chunk of yesterday on that website listening to more Lucia Popp and then more, Schuert and various Strausses. (In the evening I changed milieu and went to a riveting MSO concert of American classics: School for Scandal overture, Westside Story Symphonic Dances...

barney

If this is true - and it probably is - this is just appalling. What a terrible war this has become.

barney

As I wrote in another thread, I have nothing but contempt for Wang's ego, childishness and game-playing (eg the ultra-late cancellations). Professional people very frequently have to work with others they don't like, and they mostly manage it. She signed deals; she should uphold them. For people lik...

barney

"Cultural appropriation" is a recently coined and loaded term , and it's very foolish to judge pseudo Asian operas such as Turandot and Madama Butterly by the trendy. PC. standards of the present day . Today, cultural appropriation has to do with. white people doing things such as wearing. the clot...

barney

She can simply not rule until trial starts, then torpedo the case as the article notes.Laurence Tribe and Neil Katyal last night both felt the only safe thing is to find a way for the 11th Circuit themselves to rule on the PRA issue right now, and/or remove her from the case, but there are apparent...

barney

I'm planning to see a 2023 Rome production in an arthouse cinema next week. Watch this space ... or not!

barney

Cultural appropriation is a two-way street. How much western culture has Asia adopted, just as one example? It's all folderol, this line of thinking. All I know is those ravishing tunes by Puccini are loved by people of all nations. It may interest you to know that when Rimsky-Korsakov first heard ...

barney

Indeed, Len. When I say corrupt, I don't mean she is taking bribes - I have not the slightest reason to suggest that - I mean she is abnegating her responsibility to justice and the law in order to help the man who appointed her.

barney

Cannon's bizarre behaviour suggests she is deeply corrupt.

barney

Just see both operas as Western music - which in fact they are - and all the whining can stop. It's very tiresome. How do these cultural appropriation critics think Westerners are depicted in Asia? ARe they whinging on and on about the fact that so many Asians like Western classical music? What shoc...

barney

Febnyc wrote: ↑
Wed Apr 03, 2024 8:16 am
Who you gonna believe?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iik57JL6xvo

or

https://www.google.com/search?client=fi ... sMm1-A4_37

Tht first one has to be having a laugh. Or he's from Ulan Bator.

barney

What about when it has an "e" on the end of it? I thought that was the cue to lengthen out the vowel. Ergo, "smythe" as in "eye" but without the "e" I'd say it's "smith". Sometimes "smyth" is a fancy way of writing "smith". Somebody, somewhere along the line, has changed the "i" to a "y". Maybe the...

barney

I loved the Penguin Guides. Sad to see them go. I had them all, and I've kept about 4 from various wide-ranging dates to keep as wide a spread of reviews as possible. Like everyone else, I subscribed to Gramophone for years, and later just the digital version, but value for mone was insufficient to ...

barney

In the antipodes, so far as I know. we've always said Sm-eye-th. So it's almost certainly wrong!

barney

I remember interviewing Barrie Kosky a few years ago who told me that his opera, the Comische (only Berlin's third opera company), got more money from the Berlin City Council than Opera Australia gets from the federal government. OA exists almost entirely on box office receipts. Mind you, I'm in no ...

barney

Sorry, that answer doesn't work for me. Christians are not supposed to support evil because it opposes another evil. The Apostle Paul is quite specific: shall we do evil that good may come? God forbid. Christians are supposed to be against sexual assault, treason, lying, self-aggrandisement, corrupt...

barney

And once again, I fall back in appalled bewilderment at the "Christians" who buy this message and this trumpery.

barney

maestrob wrote: ↑
Sat Mar 30, 2024 1:39 pm
Absolutely wonderful, as expected. I had not seen this before. Many thanks, Mark, and Happy Easter!

Ditto. And I really enjoyed it. Thanks.

barney

I started my record collecting in my early teens with the wonderful World Record Club. I remember my first purchase. I had been given the Kempff (mono) LP of LvB 8, 14, 23 for my birthday and as a pianist I wanted to further explore the Beethoven sonatas. So my first purchase, oddly enough was Op2/...

barney

To me, it shows remarkable immaturity, and an artist who is used to being utterly cosseted. A deal is a deal, honour it!

barney

You think it's 'decent' to expect Democrats to create a lie about Trump's mental state, having tried to destroy him first through the legal system? I don't think it's decent to lie. I think it's proper to tell the truth, and Trump is clearly demented. That leaning forward posture is another dead gi...

barney

Well time has confounded that critic. 43 years on it is a classic production, widely admired. I saw it in 2016 and thought it ravishing. It was very much a B cast, but they still sang very well and it was beautifully balanced. Rodolfo: Bryan Hymel ten, Mimi: Maria Agresta sop, Marcello: Levente Moln...

barney

She's certainly right that, come the next pogrom, it won't matter what sort of Jew you are, any more than it did to the Nazis.

barney

Britten wrote a lot for Pears, and he is unmatched in that repertoire. I agree with Brian that he is an acquired taste; one I have largely acquired. I agree with Lance that Bostridge is a modern equivalent, and I agree that Pears is no DFD.

barney

Yes, Brian, I agree. I love symphony 5, which first attracted me to classical music, but it is not a great symphony in the sense you mean.
The fact is, you could make it the top 100 symphonies and I'd still be dithering about 95-105.

barney

Rach3 wrote: ↑
Tue Mar 19, 2024 7:04 pm

Febnyc wrote: ↑
Tue Mar 19, 2024 6:45 pm

Holden Fourth wrote: ↑
Tue Mar 19, 2024 5:50 pm
This is one of two of the best Chopin recordings I've ever heard. (The other is Sokolov's all Chopin live recital in Amsterdam in 2005) It's also a Desert Island disc for me.
It would be on my desert island also.
We're gonna' need a bigger island.

Australia?

barney

Here are the top 20 according to the 2016 BBC Music Magazine survey of 151 conductors. 1. Beethoven 3 2. Beethoven 9 3. Mozart 41 4. Mahler 9 5. Mahler 2 6. Brahms 4 7. Berlioz Symphonie Fantastique 8. Brahms Symphony 1 9. Tchaikovsky 6 10. Mahler 3 11 Beethoven 5 12 Brahms 3 13 Bruckner 8 14 Sibeli...

barney

barney wrote: ↑
Sun Mar 17, 2024 7:24 pm
Very good pick-up Belle, and unforgiveable error by me. I'll have that fixed instantly.
Thank you.

A sharp-eyed sub-editor had already picked it up, amazingly! I was very impressed.

barney

Lance wrote: ↑
Sun Mar 17, 2024 8:32 pm
Thank you for sharing. Enjoyed it. SEE? Don't be so modest, my friend.

Thank you, Lance.

barney

I LOVE the Resurrection - something in me just responds to it. It might be my favourite Mahler, though I acknowledge that others, especially the ninth, are "greater". I think it will be a brilliant concert, with the NYPO pulling out every stop.

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