She found the persons in the other car extremely interesting and had gotten into a deep conversation with them about some topic entirely unrelated to the present situation and the accident. My uncle told me years later - it amused him greatly - that my mother almost forgot and drove off without him. My mother, unfailingly polite, got out of the car and was exchanging information with, as well as offering apologies to, the other party. My mother, a notoriously bad driver, was involved in a collision in which my uncle was ejected from the back seat and ended up on the roadway. In the 1930’s, my mother’s kid brother Roger was riding in the back seat of an open convertible. She loved to engage people and draw them out in conversation. Believes in fidelity to the original score and orchestration.”Īt this point, he wasn’t even pretending to listen. “The conductor conducting tonight, John Eliot Gardiner, is great for Beethoven,” I said. As if the names Shostakovich and Tchaikovsky meant nothing to him and/or he had no opinion. I told him that I have befriended two Russian scholars through the internet - one from Arkhangelsk and the other from Petersburg - and that we collaborate on research and scholarship.
The conversation seemed to be on life support. of which he seemed proud.įor how long? “Two months,” the guy next to me said. The guy next to me said he was a professor of mathematics. Not much by way of response and no apparent interest, but he did tell me, in answer to questions of mine, that they were from Russia and were visiting. I leaned over and said to the guy to the left of me, “Excuse me, are you from Russia? I have studied Russian. I can make out words and phrases but can’t follow the conversation. Hearing Russian spoken always excites me. In Russian, as I realized after a minute or two. Two middle aged guys sitting next to me were having an animated discussion. I was in something like the fourth row center in the balcony. Beethoven’s Pastorale and seventh symphonies. On Sunday, February 23, I attended a matinee concert at Carnegie Hall.