Steve Berlin
@ethicssteve
Attorney/ethicist/Exec Dir @ChicagoEthicsBd/dad/mugwump/music/photography/baseball/Flâneur/film+pinot noiriste. Opinions mine unless noted.
Today at the post office, the courteous, professional clerk picked out these stamps for me. When I got to her counter, I told her I wanted to buy stamps. She asked whether I had any particular stamps in mind to buy, but I told her I’d like her to pick her favorites for me.☺️💟
Per Carl Grapentine on WFMT, it’s Stan Freberg’s 100th bday today. I think SNL stole the famous “more cowbell” skit from this novelty song. (Except for Christopher Walken—can’t steal him 🤣.)
For reasons inexplicable, I am deeply missing Maurizio Pollini rightly now. Especially his later late LvB.
I will forever love Trader Joe’s for many things — this luscious bag of the sweetest most perfect nectarines I have ever had being premiere among such things.
One pleasure of adulthood is appreciating humor that went way over one’s head as a kid. WFMT is airing a Covent Garden production of Mussorgsky’s Boris Gudenov (with Bryn Terfel). Cheers to the late Jay Ward for this brilliance. Slava!
What a gorgeous rendition of Brahms’s most wistful short piano piece. Perfect for a warm, Sunny Chicago afternoon. From the late Radu Lupu. I was privileged to see him many times—here in Chicago, as recitalist and soloist with the CSO. He sure “got” Brahms.
So the Cubs + Reds are tied, scoreless, top 5. ⚾️Damn good game. And I hereby praise The Great American Ballpark. Cincinnati 8/17/21.
There is nary a morning that goes by where I do not thank the universe for coffee.
July 4, 2026, Chicago, Kinzie + Clinton. Perhaps my favorite spot for photography and reflection. And, right next door to the erstwhile Blommer Chocolate Factory. 🍫 Ah, memory. Ah, Chicago. Ah, aging infrastructure. Ah, liminal space.
Happy birthday to Leoš Janáček. This Angel LP is my favorite LP ever. Recorded in Chicago’s Medinah Temple. That CSO brass, 1970.
What wondrous Mid-Summer music, Glenn Gould playing late LvB in his inimitable way. Here the op. 126 bagatelles. His #4 in b minor is too percussive for my ear, but the rest is poetry: the melding of two musical geniuses.
I both love and detest the apparent need for secrecy here. But I accept that it’s necessary. Cf. Get Smart, The Cone of Silence.⚾️🙃
The more I listen to Chopin’s mazurkas, the more I am impressed at our beleaguered species’s ability to recognize and cope with our beleagueredness.
LvB’s op. 126 bagatelles are near and dear to my heart. Glenn Gould’s quirky interpretations I appreciate. One quirky genius interpreting another.
Michigan asparagus. Der Spargel (green). Roasted with lemon, salt, pepper, chile, and olive oil. A cure for whatever ails you. Like Mozart.
A classic, endlessly irresolvable question. And ultimately pointless: what is your favorite Beatles album? Right now it’s Sgt. Pepper.
As I age, I see this very late LvB gem as more and more relevant. Certainly one of the most taut, terse, laconic, economical, efficient movements in all of his work.🎻
Happy bday to Richard Strauss. As I age, I appreciate his wistful, wise genius more and more. And so damn romantic. Like no one else.
This is so good. I saw a fine play a few weeks ago about Harry Blackmun and Warren Burger, in St. Paul—Courting Harry, by Lee Blessing. ⚾️⚖️🎭
I’ve got to hand it to CHSN: they’re bringing me back to 1983. I was in law school, 3L, here at Northwestern. The White Sox made the post-season that year. First time a Chicago baseball team had made the post season since 1959, the year I was born. This team — the Chicago White Sox— is dear to me.⚾️
Happy bday to Robert Schumann. This is my favorite piece of chamber music ever, the Eb piano quintet. And this recording—wow. As to would-be lawyer composers, Schumann stands alone. Poor, tortured genius.
Happy 100 to Klaus Tennstedt, one of the great Mahler conductors. Pure, complex, shifting gold, these LP’s 1986 and 1980, respectively.
In my next life I would graciously accept returning as a Chicago water fowl.
When I taught ethics, for the fjnal exam, I’d ask students to explain in an essay what they thought of this passage.
A few days ago I saw Martin Helmchen deliver a sublime Brahms 1st piano concerto. A mesmerizing performance. The Chicago Symphony program book points out that this magnificent work’s first Ravinia performance was 7/31/1945. Leon Fleisher, and Leonard Bernstein. Imagine that.
Happy bday to old Sir Edward Elgar. I adore his cello concerto, Enigma Variations, and all 5 Pomp + Circumstance marches. But his Dream of Gerontius still eludes me.