"It's really a question about inspiration ... what is it that Beethoven sees in this 32 bars of nothing?" says Kaufman. "I always say it would be like if Philip Glass found a song by Britney Spears and decided to spend the next four years of his life studying and making variations on it."
Devoted to the Franco-Polish composer, his music reverberates around the tiny bar while drinks and décor are devoted to the great man, too.
Now, for the first time, we know that the intensely private Gould carried on an affair for five years, beginning in 1967, with a married German-American painter named Cornelia Foss. She left her husband Lukas, himself a prominent pianist and conductor, and moved her two children to Toronto at the height of the affair. A year before her move, Gould had asked her to marry him.
1. What's the best quotation of a piece of music within another piece of music?
Definitely the acidic handling of a Shostakovich's 7th in Bartok's "Concerto for Orchestra".
2. Name the best classical crossover album ever made.
Wendy Carlos's Switched-On Bach.
3. Great piece with a terrible title.
Sorabji's Opus Clavicembalisticum
4. If you had to choose: Benjamin Britten or Michael Tippett?
Benjamin Britten. The "Scottish Ballade" alone seals the deal for me.
5. Who's your favorite spouse of a composer/performer? (Besides your own.)
"My father made me neurotic and my husband made me crazy"
- Wanda Toscanini Horowitz
6. Terrible piece with a great title?
Daugherty's "Le tombeau de Liberace"
7. What's the best use of a classical warhorse in a Hollywood movie?
Love the use of the Delibes' "Flower Duet" in Five Corners. Or how about Mahler in Herzog's "Lessons of Darkness"?
There are so many great films with effective use of classical music it's not really possible to pin it down to one.
8. Name the worst classical crossover album ever made.
Has Rufus Wainwright finished his "opera" yet? No? Then put me down for "Saturday Night Fiedler". Why? Four words: "Night on Disco Mountain". Nuf said.
9. If you had to choose: Sam Cooke or Marvin Gaye?
Sam Cooke.
10. Name a creative type in a non-musical medium who would have been a great composer.
Gustave Flaubert.
EXTRA CREDIT:
For opera nerds: If you had to choose:
a) Lawrence Tibbett or Robert Merrill?
b) Amelita Galli-Curci or Lily Pons?
a) Robert Merrill
b) Lily Pons.
For early-music nerds: Name a completely and hopelessly historically uninformed recording that you nevertheless love.
Edwin Fischer's WTC.
This dexterity approaches that of a native arm, which can make 30 motions, and trumps the previously most agile bionic arm, the Proto 1, which could bend at the elbow, rotate its wrist and shoulder, and open and close its fingers. A person wearing a Proto 2 could conceivably play the piano.
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If any other 60-year-old musician put on a show as self-congratulatory as this, you'd guess they were about to retire. Not Elton John. He is inexhaustible.
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