Music

Katie Hafner's A Romance on Three Legs: Glenn Gould's Obsessive Quest for the Perfect Piano is published by Bloomsbury.

This book is really the story of two eccentrics. The first is Gould, easily the most finicky in a strong field of stubborn kooks on the concert-pianist circuit. The second, and more interesting, is the collectively eccentric industry of concert-piano builders, as epitomized by Steinway & Sons and the peculiar men (they are all men, at least in this account) who keep their products in tune. Other books have documented Gould's eccentricities better -- this one wastes a great deal of space reprising tired anecdotes about his summer overcoats, his extreme sensitivity to touch, and his diet of Arrowroot biscuits and ketchup -- but the Steinway thread reveals an unfamiliar and fascinating side of the classical-music industry.

News reports suggest that Apple is in negotiations with major record labels over an all-you-can-listen music subscription that would be bundled with future iPods and iPhones.

After the Financial Times broke the story, analysts scrambled to explain the deeper significance of Apple's move. Was this a good deal for the major labels? Peter Kafka of Silicon Alley Insider argued that a music subscription service would be a home run. Others wondered if Apple would offer unlimited music for the life of the device or impose a monthly fee structure, like the popular iTunes alternative Rhapsody.

The New York Philharmonic played a concert in Pyongyang, as the largest American group to visit North Korea since the war.

Politically, the concert flopped. Kim Jong Il, who invited the New York players last August, failed to appear, and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice dismissed any temptation to get "carried away with what listening to Dvorak is going to do in North Korea." In the midst of a two-month stalemate over delayed nuclear disarmament, the Philharmonic’s performance could provide little more than a soothing distraction.  

The only unambiguous winner was the orchestra itself. Splashed across the front pages of national newspapers, the Philharmonic reclaimed a cultural authority for classical music belied by its graying, shrinking audience. As American orchestras struggle to stay afloat here, North Korean artists enjoy generous government subsidies in return for their service as professional glorifiers of Kim Jong Il and the Juche Idea. Fortunately, the popularity of classical music outside America is growing, particularly in China. But for home-grown fans and performers, the question is: will America preserve its Western cultural patrimony, with the goodwill it buys, or abandon it to the East?