Monthly Archives: May 2010

Orchestra Gold

Of late I’ve been bathing, luxuriating, and reveling in the shimmering luminance that is the Staatskapelle Dresden playing the Schubert symphonies. No other orchestra produces such a seamless yet lithe sound, no other orchestra possesses such golden brass or winsome … Continue reading

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A Tweak That Works

The audiophile world is awash in tweaks—devices, techniques, gizmos, and practices that promise to improve the sound of one’s system. Their efficacy is hotly debated and may be in fact one of the hottest topics around audiophile-dom, right up there … Continue reading

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Mozartean Mess

Beethoven wrote nine symphonies; Brahms, four; Sibelius, seven; Shostakovich, fifteen. Those numbers aren’t likely to change—only the fringe types suspect there might be a Beethoven Tenth still floating somewhere in the void, or that Sibelius didn’t really burn up the … Continue reading

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Twenty-seven 39s

If you’ve ever spent much time reading through a CD review site or magazine, you’ve probably picked up on the notion of depth in a record review—i.e., speaking from having heard many recordings of the work in question. Presumably a … Continue reading

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Little Pink House

My grandparents Scott and Kathleen Hollyfield lived at 705 Hill Road, Houston, in the Aldine area, an old-timey country-ish area north of downtown. We lived across town on Chatterton Drive, over to the west of downtown in a new housing … Continue reading

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Revisiting an American Tragedy

Whatever got into me recently I’ll never know, but I decided there was nothing for it but to revisit Truman Capote’s non-fiction novel "In Cold Blood" as well as the two principal movies concerning the same topic: Richard Brooks’ 1967 … Continue reading

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Billions and Billions

Once in a while I flinch away from some news item as the enormity of the sums being bandied about hits me. We’ve gotten so used to seeing numbers expressed in the billions that they seem humdrum, rounding errors or … Continue reading

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Sidecars: Swank and Sensual

In the movie version of "Auntie Mame", that classic 1950s comedy-cum–gay icon, Rosalind Russell defines the ingredients for a simple, light breakfast to get her going as she arises in "the pearly part of the day"—i.e., about 3:00 PM. Nothing … Continue reading

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Thank You, Dr. Fritz

“Our engineers have always been given a lot of freedom. They are allowed to give free rein to their creative ideas, no matter how crazy they might seem. Often, it is these very ideas that result in the best developments … Continue reading

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Snits and Present Evidence

Your experience, on present evidence. Dhamma teacher Howard Cohn’s phrase advises us to take the experience of the moment solely as the sum total of sensory perception, what’s actually happening minus the usual overlay of opinion, mental spin, or framework. … Continue reading

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