My week started and ended in the New School's main auditorium. This afternoon I was part of the audience as a garland of illustrious talking heads talked at each other about the prospects of liberalism and democracy, together or apart - a first major centennial event. I wasn't there for all of it, but the exchanges I heard were instantly forgettable. But I was - and am - still churning with memories of Monday evening, when I attended a concert of the Mannes Orchestra with student conductors. For that I sat front center, the orchestra spread before me like the Grand Canyon, watching in delight as Tchaikovsky's Romeo and Juliet waxed and waned through the assembled intrumentalists. But what hasn't let me go are Rachmaninoff's weird and wonderful Symphonic Dances, familiar from recordings but an experience, when you're embraced by the orchestra like that, as vertiginous as being in a boat in a big-swelled sea. I've still not quite regained my land legs.
