last at Menlo

Back to Menlo for another review, this one of Beethoven's Op. 135, which I was looking forward to all right, and Schubert's Winterreise, which I ... um ... well ... I ... um, ah ...

And yes, if you've read the review now, you've read aright. Once I already managed to get a quote from Buffy the Vampire Slayer into a review, but this time, in an entirely serious review, I've quoted Super Chicken.

Went back for a talk by Larry Todd on Fanny Mendelssohn Hensel and Clara Wieck Schumann, the forgotten women composers of German romanticism. FMH wrote a lot more music than I'd known about, including a string quartet which, like her brother's early quartets, follows Beethoven very closely.

Questions. First person embarked on a rant about the lack of women composers at Menlo. Made its point and then went on about five times longer. All that Todd, who has no control over Menlo programming, could say was, "Good point," and then to add that aspiring performers should listen to lots of music and, if they find something that moves them, play it.

Second person began "We know that Clara Schumann and Johannes Brahms were in love" and asked Todd to comment. He said what any careful scholar would, which is that Clara and Johannes were obviously very close friends, but we don't know anything more than that. But they were very close friends.