bart, on 22 September 2010 - 07:50 AM, said:
... a literal-minded, short-term thinker ...
Did somebody call my name? But my literal-minded quibble this time concerns Avery Fisher. For the sake of BT's accuracy, notice the spelling of his last name, which was convenient for the trademark his company, Fisher Radio, adopted for its line of audio products, a bird in flight carrying a musical note in its beak, like a twig, but considerably more inspiring to us music-lovers at the time. Fisher himself, a professional musician or at least a devoted music lover, sold the business in 1969 for $31 million, or something like that, according to the Wikipedia (not the best source - I doubt that Fisher or his engineers invented the transistor amplifier, for instance), and the rest of that story is sufficiently well known to make an interesting and even heartening contrast to the Koch story. "Music Lover Helps Philharmonic Fix Concert Hall"? If you're another music lover yourself, you have to love it!
But seriously, I'm glad to find more support here for my own preference for "State Theatre," rather than Koch Theatre, beyond my own tendency sometimes to "wander aimlessly in the irretrievable past or in distant Utopias; ... the fleeting moment we cannot grasp,” in Ernst Junger's lugubrious formulation. I certainly couldn't grasp "the fleeting moment" watching the program on the evening of 9th June in the, uh, New York State Theatre, when as usual in my recent experience, New York City Ballet paid respect to Balanchine as much or more in the breach than in the observance, the breach being between the way ballet was danced there in his day - a way he was very concerned to achieve, a way which he apparently, and some of us as well, considered about as important as the steps and movements themselves - the breach between that way and the way it's danced there today, and so - sorry if this seems disagreeable - the idea of "Balanchine Theatre" makes me wince, personally.
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