Behold an amazing clip of Glenn Gould playing the first portion of Bach’s Piano Concerto 1 (in D Minor, kids) accompanied by the New York Philharmonic with Leonard Bernstein conducting. The opening five or so minutes consists of a lecture–very well done–by Lenny discussing the lack of indication in Bach’s
Sorry to have skipped a day, but not doing stuff is what Boxing Day is all about, right? Anyway, here’s a 1928 Laurel & Hardy silent called ‘The Finishing Touch’. The plot is beyond simple. L&H have inexplicably been hired to build a house. A cop and a woman who
‘Pals and Gals’ (1954) is the 155th short comedy made by The Three Stooges for Columbia Pictures. It is heavily reliant on footage culled from ‘Out West’ (1947) as well as a Curly entry ‘Goofs And Saddles’ (1937). Thus the only day of photography required to link the various threads
The YouTube artist known as NASS has done it again, giving us another of his superlative restorations of urban footage from the past. His colorization and added sound effects (plus intricate frame rate adjustment) serve to recast documentary footage of the past into the present tense, allowing us to not
This one’s a bit difficult to take. Unlike the previous few posts of Bradley Cooper–er, Leonard Bernstein–tussling with his orchestra, this is a recording of Arturo Toscanini berating his orchestra in such foul, angry, loud and insulting ways that I can’t believe they didn’t just get up and abandon the
Welcome to another clip of Leonard Bernstein in conflict with his orchestral players. This time, during a rehearsal of Elgar’s ‘Enigma Variations’, he rubs one of the three trumpet players the wrong way when imitating they’re playing in order to describe what he doesn’t like. His imitation is a bit
Last Friday I posted a short clip of Leonard Bernstein calling out a student conductor. This of course led YouTube to generate a number of Lenny B. arguments with orchestra personnel all of which are quite delightful (and short). Here’s Lenny tussling with alto Krista Ludwig during a rehearsal for
I saw the superb Broadway revival of Stephen Sondheim’s ‘Merrily We Roll Along’ this past Sunday which of course led to a deep Stephen dive on YouTube. Of primary importance in the canon of filmed Stephen stuff is D.A. Pennebaker’s remarkable documentation of the marathon recording session of the original
Enjoy a condensed day/evening in the Berlin of 1927, featuring some awfully well-dressed Menschen, lovely streets and shops, a fine looking Neutrum for luncheon and an evening at a Nachtclub that may well have featured Anita Berber (our subject of Monday’s post which has kicked off this weeks interest in
Behold Anita Berber, a dancer/actress/performer/scandalous provocateuer of the late teens/1920s German cultural landscape. Berber was daring, mad, wildly admired and reviled and died young in 1929 of multiple drug addictions and a general exhaustion of excessive existence. Little of her film work is extant but the above video features two