The Fredösphere

I should blog Alex Ross' visit to U-M.  He gave the keynote address at a Shostakovich symposium jointly sponsored by university historians and musicians.  No doubt the event's organizers felt they needed to give Alex pride of place as the out-of-town expert, but it may have been better had the talks been given in reverse order:  last came a professor who gave the political context (constant repression and surveillance under the Soviets); in the middle came a doctoral student who described Shostakovich's tendency to disguise his true thoughts, which make his descriptions of his own work unreliable; leading the way was Alex Ross, who seems eager to move beyond the political implications of the music by looking at literary influences upon Shostakovich.  It was fun to be in a crowd with a fair number of Russian speakers.  I should also mention the presence of two Kirov Orchestra members, one of whom is old enough to have played while the composer was still around.

One thing I couldn't understand:  all the speakers continually referred to stalling.  It was always "Shostakovich and stalling."  Apparently stalling was his biggest problem.  Alex Ross is tired of this topic, saying he wanted to write an entire article about Shostakovich without mentioning stalling.  I'm very confused.  I never dreamed Shostakovich was a procrastinator.  Everyone describes him as very prolific.  I guess I still have something to learn about him.

I introduced myself to Alex afterwards, but kept the meeting brief; others were waiting to talk to him, and frankly, the thought of playing the role of annoying fanboy horrifies me.

What I really wanted to do was live-blog the event, but technical limitations prevented me.  It would have been so cool for me to do so, since we all know that all live-blogging is at all times compelling.*  If I reconstruct the event from the copious notes I took, we can get an idea of what the live-blog would have been like.  Here's an excerpt:

1:24:05 p.m.  Alex just paused mid-sentence.  Something is going on.
1:24:12 p.m.  Alex is raising his hand.  A dramatic gesture??????
1:24:17 p.m.  Unbelievable!  He's picking his nose!  Update, 1:24:20 p.m.:  oops, my mistake; he's scratching his nose.  Without a doubt, all finger-nose contact is of an exterior nature.  Whew.
1:24:24 p.m.  He's putting his hand down now.  It appears he will resume speaking any moment.

*Hey:  he wrote "all" three times in one sentence.  That's odd.