The long, L-shaped studio has windows on one side, and two overstuffed and very beat-up armchairs, where he does most of his reading.
It brings to mind the intonation of his reading voice: O hoo can you keep in the air sae lang Muckle black craw, fleein' dooble like that?
The American ballerina Maria Tallchief, with whom Nureyev had a fling around this time, was also "astonished" by the sophistication of his reading.
Daniel Baer played the piano line with fluidity, warmth and sparkle, and the string players — Nikita Morozov, violinist; Megan Griffin, violist; and Kristen Wojcik, cellist — matched the richness and depth of his reading.
So for the rest of his reading the audience remained silent, except for the occasional laugh, such as when he accidentally dropped the same piece of paper for the fourth time, making him laughingly mutter, "Jesus Christ!".
WD Snodgrass, a wonderful poet who is always an exuberant performer on the podium, was dismayed one year in Edinburgh to be given a fearful ticking off by Auden for the manner of his reading.
To the end he retained his fanatical love of poetry – especially the work of his friend Geoffrey Hill, whom he could make comprehensible by the manner of his reading him out loud.
There were moments of coarseness in the opening Allegro non troppo; but Mr. Previn conducted the movement with a gracious sweep, and the players quickly picked up the spirit of his reading.
There had been books in his house when he was growing up – "Reader's Digest condensed books, The Robe, Georgette Heyer" – and his mother had encouraged and was proud of his reading.
Ten-year-old Benj depicted the value and sanctity of his reading experience in "The Reading Boy," a poem he wrote as part of a homework assignment: There once was a boy who was good, And on a big ladder he stood.
Borges's work answers the unanswerable weight of his reading, the boyish and the arcane at once.
