Author Archives: Scott Foglesong

A cheap entertainer who fancies himself a writer was the judgment pronounced by a colleague who had no idea that her words would come bouncing back to me, and in short order. I took her dig in stride, figuring that: … Continue reading →

You gotta admire the sheer cheek of conductors Riccardo Chailly, Daniel Barenboim, Christian Thielemann, and Osmo Vänskä. They’ve done something that requires serious levels of chutzpah, guts like no tomorrow, cajones the size of basketballs. That something: record the Beethoven … Continue reading →

Of late I’ve been living in the Henriad, that glorious quartet of Shakespeare plays that dramatize the turbulent times from the deposition of Richard II through Henry V’s trumph at Agincourt. Though they’re classified as histories, in fact the Henriad … Continue reading →

For no particular reason I have just re-read Daphne du Maurier’s drawing-room Gothic Rebecca. I vividly remember my first read-through, a high school kid staying up through most of the night, somehow ardently compelled by the vividness of the concocted … Continue reading →

I’m no stranger to, or enemy of, the Historically Informed Performance (HIP) movement. My CV provides unimpeachable evidence: harpsichord student of Baroque maven Laurette Goldberg, enthusiastic collector of HIP recordings, former program annotator and scholar-in-residence to the Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra. … Continue reading →

I hear that a long-standing blight in my neighborhood, a bottle-and-can recycling center about three blocks away, is finally (and blissfully) to close in a few months. This is as good of news as I’ve heard in a while. Not … Continue reading →

Recently I swapped some components between my living room and home office stereo. I won’t go into the lurid details, but suffice it to say that, whereas in the earlier home office setup the amplifier was on the top of … Continue reading →

For a while there it looked as though the sound system wasn’t working worth beans. We might have to dispense with the microphone and go into full-throttle classroom bellow. “Well, I suppose it’s OK,” said my fellow speaker. “I gave … Continue reading →

I came across a silly article in a silly magazine, written by a silly millennial-type young person on a silly topic: bewailing the often dire financial condition of your average millenium-type young person. Silly, silly. Looka here, kid: you’re supposed … Continue reading →

People forget that friends, especially long-term friends, have a special abiding responsibility to each other, far more than do casual acquaintances, colleagues, or even sometime friends. The longer you know a person, the more accountable you are for your deeds, … Continue reading →