“When is the Philadelphia Orchestra not the Philadelphia Orchestra? It’s no riddle, but a question of artistic integrity tested by the orchestra’s Sunday night New Year’s Eve concert in which a quarter or more of the musicians on stage at Verizon Hall were substitutes. It might not be worth noting had the members of the orchestra been less righteous about such matters in the past.”
Tag: 01.02.07
Free Will: Just An Illusion?
“A bevy of experiments in recent years suggest that the conscious mind is like a monkey riding a tiger of subconscious decisions and actions in progress, frantically making up stories about being in control. As a result, physicists, neuroscientists and computer scientists have joined the heirs of Plato and Aristotle in arguing about what free will is, whether we have it, and if not, why we ever thought we did in the first place.”
The Tango As Tool Of Middle East Peace
In Buenos Aires, “Israeli and Palestinian ambassadors sat side by side in the final hours of 2006 in a show of unity at a concert led by the renowned Argentine-born conductor Daniel Barenboim, a prominent advocate for peace in the Middle East. On Sunday night, Barenboim departed from his usual repertoire of classical music, and instead focused on Buenos Aires’ signature genre: tango.”
Springtime For Hitler, German Variety
“Coming soon to German cinemas: a demoralized, drug-addled Adolf Hitler who plays with a toy battleship in the bathtub, dresses his dog in a Nazi uniform and takes acting tips from a Jewish concentration camp inmate. The movie, which opens Jan. 11, is treading ground that once would have been off-limits. This is not Mel Brooks’ ‘The Producers’ or Charlie Chaplin’s ‘The Great Dictator,’ but a German movie that dares to treat Hitler as comedy.”