TT: Made manifest

I often have occasion to make favorable mention in this space and elsewhere of Think Denk, Jeremy Denk’s witty blog about “the glamorous life and thoughts of a concert pianist.” Not long ago our mutual friend Anya Grundmann, who helps run the NEA Arts Journalism Institute in Classical Music and Opera, invited the two of us to appear jointly at the next institute to talk about blogging. We live in the same neighborhood but had never met, so I invited Mr. Think Denk to tour the Teachout Museum and have lunch with me at Good Enough to Eat. It took us several weeks to come up with a mutually compatible date–we’ve both been on the road for much of the summer–but we finally managed to converge on Friday afternoon.
No sooner had I opened the door to my apartment than we started pelting one another with opinions, some of which we shared (four thumbs up for Verdi’s Falstaff) and some not (he likes Ives and Schumann a lot more than I do). The talk was more or less nonstop, though we did pause long enough to cram down lunch and listen to four records that came up in the conversation:
• Van Cliburn playing the first movement of the Barber Piano Sonata
• Gérard Souzay’s 1946 recording of Fauré’s “Clair de lune”
• A 1909 recording of Reynaldo Hahn’s “Offrande” sung by the composer to his own piano accompaniment
• A recording of “Quand’ero paggio,” an aria from Falstaff, made in 1907 by Victor Maurel, the baritone who created the role fourteen years earlier
Mr. Think Denk is every bit as smart and thoughtful in person as you’d expect from reading his blog. Time was when this might have surprised me, but experience has taught me that such is usually the case with the best bloggers. Alas, I’m afraid I talked his ear off about The Letter–I’d had an unusually productive work session with Paul Moravec the day before and was still booming and zooming as a result–but he was kind enough to act interested and ask leading questions, to which I obligingly responded by hosing him down with superfluous information. (At least I stayed off the subject of Louis Armstrong’s embouchure!)
No doubt one of the secondary reasons for my garrulity was that I’d finally managed to lick the case of allergy-heightened, stress-exacerbated sniffles that tore a hole in the past two weeks of my life. As usual I celebrated by revving up my engine: on Saturday I took a train to Baltimore to see CenterStage’s production of Arsenic and Old Lace, and the next day I was back in New York for a press preview of Dividing the Estate, Horton Foote’s new play. This week I’ll be writing three pieces, seeing two more shows, and paying a visit to the Armstrong Archives at Queens College.
Whatever else my life is or isn’t, it’s definitely not dull. Neither Mr. Think Denk nor I can still quite believe that people actually pay us to do what we do. Yes, I work too damn hard and don’t always take proper care of myself, but I suspect that the sheer pleasure of spending my days immersed in art up to the eyebrows offsets no small part of the resulting wear and tear.
It’s nice to be myself again.