1953 also saw a stream of premieres of the "desk drawer" works.
A large drawer works well, if you have one.
As a supporting performer, Brooke Smith has been doing top-drawer work for a decade.
FAVORITE PERFORMANCE BY AN OLD PRO That's a tough one in a year that saw top-drawer work from Michael Connelly in THE FIFTH WITNESS (Little, Brown, $27.99), James Lee Burke in FEAST DAY OF FOOLS (Simon & Schuster, $26.99) and Thomas Perry in THE INFORMANT (Otto Penzler/Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, $27).
"At least new drawers work and the bottoms won't fall out," Ms. Einhorn said.
Jewelry boxes with drawers work, too.
The music of those composers has been fully explored, even if most performers usually concentrate on the top-drawer works.
She demonstrated how the drawers worked; they stayed locked unless you gripped the sides of the lions' jaws, and then they slid open easily, smoothly.
Anticipation, though, is tempered with apprehension because bottom-drawer works often turn out to have been consigned there for a reason.
Valery Gergiev's current mission, with the London Symphony Orchestra in tow, is a coast-to-coast tour to persuade American audiences that the Prokofiev symphonies are top-drawer works, even though the composer periodically expressed doubts about some of them.
