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“H” is for Hash. Hearty meals have been cooked in large, cast-iron pots since the Middle Ages. Variations are endless. In South Carolina, hash takes the place of honor held by Brunswick stew in other southern states.

In The Barber of Seville and his many other operas, Gioacchino Rossini gave singers plenty of opportunities to show off their talents. But in a letter he wrote in 1851, Rossini made it clear that he didn’t have much patience for the cult of the great singer.

Mozart, they say, could compose music while he was playing billiards. Rossini wrote that he had once composed an overture while standing in the water fishing and listening to his fishing partner discuss Spanish finance.

A scientist I know was talking about great works of literature the other day, and she said that what characterized them was the “density of brilliance.” What a wonderful phrase. And how perfect, too, for great works of music.

Bach himself didn’t invent any of the forms he used. He used the forms he inherited, but he transformed them .

A scientist I know was talking about great works of literature the other day, and she said that what characterized them was the “density of brilliance.” What a wonderful phrase. And how perfect, too, for great works of music.

After Beethoven, all composers were seen and evaluated in Beethoven’s light, or rather in his enormous shadow.

Mozart, they say, could compose music while he was playing billiards. Rossini wrote that he had once composed an overture while standing in the water fishing and listening to his fishing partner discuss Spanish finance.

"Let go, in some ways, of the idea of perfection," the pianist says. "Make the thing in front of you the best it can be."

Now, if ever there was a musician who was entitled to say of a Bartók quartet, “This is the way it goes,” it was Robert Mann. He knew those quartets inside out, and had recorded them more than once.