What Some Have Forgotten, or Perhaps Never Knew

The hands you see are Martha Argerich’s and those of a very young pianist, her grandson. What do you see? Who is the mentor, and who is the mentored? Who showed the way, and who benefits from that?

The Avant-Gardist Haircut of Martha Dix

Quite by accident, as is usually the case, I ran across a portrait Otto Dix painted of “Mrs. Martha Dix (1928).” Above you’ll see the two of them, as photographed by August Sander. The haircut in this magnificent photograph is, however, but a pale reflection of Otto Dix’s representation of his wife’s hair.

Men’s Fashion

John Laver, in his 1925 book “Portraits in Oil and Vinegar,” wrote of Sir Walter Russell:

“He might be described as a typical ‘New English” painter, typical, that is, of its earlier, more traditional days, before it had begun to open its gates to some of the more eccentric young men whose work has been seen at its recent exhibitions. He has always been admired by his fellow-artists, but until the success of Mr. Minney, his 1920 Academy picture now in the Tate Gallery, he was scarcely even a name among the philistines.

A Feast of Chamber Music

Thanks to David Nice’s Russian Music class, I’ve been introduced not only to a wealth of chamber music I didn’t know, but also to a cornucopia of brilliant musicians. In a past class, this included Boris Giltburg, and in the most recent class Alina Ibragimova and Benjamin Baker—and through Baker, Daniel Lebhardt.

Ballet of the Unhatched Chicks

Viktor Hartmann’s sketch of unhatched canary chicks for a ballet called Trilby or The Demon of the Heath made its way, in musical form, into Musorgsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition (1874). While written originally for piano, I suspect many of us were introduced to the work through Ravel’s orchestration. From that perspective, listening to the original piano version offers several orders of revelation.