But there was plenty of fine playing throughout, and Mr. Gersen effectively illuminated many details, beginning with the mysterious opening passages.
The problems surfaced mostly in details, beginning with ordering a 1998 wine and being served, without comment or explanation, a 1999 vintage.
The performances never reached a white-hot level of excitement, but his Apollonian playing was notable for its probing insights and carefully wrought details, beginning with the two works by C. P. E. Bach that opened the program.
"Italian Ways" is all details, beginning with a series of vignettes that evoke the sights, smells, and sense of weary, trundling humanity of a commute on the patchy rail system through Lombardy and the Veneto.
"Gorey Details" begins with Ogdred Weary riding onstage on a bicycle, reciting words from "Q.R.V": "Haiku, Glue, Seppaku Maru, Wiggle, Wuggle, Wuggily Ump," followed by his comment, "I really must write something today".
I'm of the opinion that a culture, a system of communication, if you like, manifests itself entirely in anything the people of that culture do…. the secret is always in the details…" "Italian Ways" is all details, beginning with a series of vignettes that evoke the sights, smells, and sense of weary, trundling humanity of a commute on the patchy rail system through Lombardy and the Veneto.
The Torah's focus on seemingly mundane details began with the tort laws of Parashat Mishpatim, and will continue well into the chapters of Leviticus outline the many different sacrifices.
He then got down to details, beginning with a pledge that, "[w]here demanded by justice and national security," "some detainees" -- mercifully, not all 240 -- will be transferred to secure prisons on the U.S. mainland (with some added reassurance that "nobody has ever escaped from one of our federal 'supermax' prisons").
It then examines each of these in greater detail, beginning with the brief and progressing through research of both technical and market issues.
And this in fact is something that we'll be talking about in a fair amount of detail, beginning with the next lecture.
