drdavidvernon.bsky.social - Profile | ThreadSky | a Reddit-style client for Bluesky

At Kafka’s grave this afternoon, deeply moved, rereading Metamorphosis. This wonderful, terrifying text which repays countless revisits and infinite interpretations. Thank you, Franz.

submitted 1 day ago • 1 comment

Am in Prague at the moment. Recreating favourite CD covers. 😊

submitted 2 days ago • 9 comments

the eternal problem of the literary traveller: how much proust to take. :-)

submitted 7 days ago • 2 comments

There is music and there is music. Bach’s sonatas and partitas for solo violin are the latter. Some of the most profound and moving utterances in all art.

submitted 10 days ago • 4 comments

With Emily D— at the end of the world—

submitted 11 days ago • 2 comments

The ghost of Bach naturally haunts Shostakovich’s 24 Preludes and Fugues — but these are unique sound worlds, DSCH by turns transcendent, chaotic, heroic and sarcastic before a stately and sublime exit in D minor.

submitted 17 days ago • 2 comments

Decadent. Excessive. Unhinged. Scriabin’s piano music is an addictive hallucination.

submitted 24 days ago • 2 comments

Ah, Montaigne. The sheer beauty of his prose, the elegance of his insights. And we seem to need his sense of self-awareness and critical thinking more than ever.

submitted 31 days ago • 0 comments

Stephen Hough's Piano Concerto is a thrilling new work. Thoroughly enjoyed the Zweigian sense of history, tension and imagination, the interplay of nobility and nostalgia. Some lovely spice and humour too. If you love Rachmaninov, Korngold and Bartók, you must hear this!

submitted 33 days ago • 1 comment

Raphaël Pichon's Matthew Passion takes its place as one of the great interpretations of Bach's masterpiece: transparent, lithe, full of drama & shape, the singing and playing are immaculate. Such nimbleness perhaps undermines the overall cosmic impact, but it's a stunning record.

submitted 35 days ago • 1 comment

sometimes you need to go on a little john le carré binge. not just a great thriller and espionage writer, but a great writer full stop.

submitted 37 days ago • 4 comments

Handel’s 340th birthday. Time for Giulio Cesare — one of those exquisite, extraordinary musical things that make you believe in humanity again. Glorious composer.

submitted 38 days ago • 3 comments

How I wish this version had been around when I wrote my book on Mahler's symphonies! Rattle's new Mahler 7 from Bavaria is absolutely stunning: the clarity & brilliance of both the playing and the recording take the breath away. Might now be my top choice for this amazing work.

submitted 48 days ago • 4 comments

No turning back: today I begin writing my book on Clarice Lispector's novels, stories and crônicas. Daunted, nervous, but immensely excited — for Clarice is a writer who encourages not only intense intellectual and emotional enquiry, but elation and exhilaration.

submitted 66 days ago • 5 comments

A cellist of cosmic power, technical audacity and unforgettable expressive intimacy, Jacqueline du Pré was born 80 years ago today. Her recordings still astonish and astound — before making you weep tears that might never end.

submitted 66 days ago • 3 comments

This is a wonderful new recording of Mieczysław Weinberg's The Passenger (1968) from Mirga Gražinytė-Tyla. Based on Zofia Posmysz's great novel, the opera is an interplay between two levels: above, the deck of an ocean liner and below, Auschwitz concentration camp. Zofia herself survived Auschwitz.

submitted 67 days ago • 4 comments

some of my favourite chamber music of all: dvořák’s string quartets. infectious wonders, stuffed to the gills with gorgeous textures and inescapable earworms.

submitted 69 days ago • 1 comment

fragile, despondent, hypnotic, deeply moving — the rings of saturn is a such a gorgeous book, not just blurring the boundaries between 'fact' and 'fiction' but rendering them meaningless in the face of wider truths (about memory, landscape, patterns, transience)

submitted 70 days ago • 2 comments

Astonishing Beethoven from Igor Levit, bringing out all the impetuous delight and rambunctious disruption of these glorious sonatas. Absolutely mesmerising recordings — joins Kempff, Gilels, Uchida and Schnabel in the very top drawer of my favourite Beethoven pianists.

submitted 71 days ago • 3 comments

Long novels have their own particular set of pleasures, but there is a special magic to the mere hours and minutes we spend with short novels and novellas, relishing not just their sharp impact but the craft and technique needed for a smaller space. Here are a few favourites...

submitted 76 days ago • 7 comments

Discriminating, cultured and effortlessly stylish, Stephen Hough’s Chopin Nocturnes radiate intelligence and good taste. A marvellous album — joins recordings by Maria João Pires, Artur Rubinstein, Ivan Moravec and Claudio Arrau as my favourite of this wonderful music.

submitted 76 days ago • 2 comments

Today is the 100th anniversary of Yukio Mishima's birth and I am delighted to reveal the cover for my book on his absolutely extraordinary novels. Out in September!

submitted 78 days ago • 5 comments

Unite to give praise to three giants of the piano, all born on 5 January: Arturo Benedetti Michelangeli, Maurizio Pollini and dear Alfred Brendel — 94 candles on his cake today.

submitted 87 days ago • 5 comments

Whatever we lose in translation, we lose far more by not reading at all.

submitted 89 days ago • 0 comments

One of my favourite books this year. Part geographical exploration of Britain's flattest places — Orkney, Morecambe, Cambridgeshire — part psychological exploration of @noreenmasud.bsky.social's personal history. It's raw but quietly beautiful, intimate and unexpected. A wonderful achievement.

submitted 93 days ago • 3 comments

On International Cello Day, Bach’s sublime sequence of suites. Some of my favourite chamber music of all, they pulse and slide with elegance and verve, producing endless varieties of colour, emotion and thought. Extraordinary creations.

submitted 94 days ago • 3 comments

Looking for a big read this winter? Make it Murasaki’s Tale of Genji (源氏物語, c.1021), one of the earliest novels. As a supple, graceful study of eleventh-century Japan it is exquisite, but so too is its psychological depth, its probing of the world’s transience. It’s superb.

submitted 101 days ago • 3 comments

Listening to Bach before dawn is always magical — especially if it’s the St John Passion. This intimate, electric metaphysical drama, Bach at his most bruised and compelling.

submitted 101 days ago • 2 comments

Generous, insightful review of my Sibelius book from MusicWeb International. ‘Carefully considered, cogently argued and elegantly written ... provocative at times but which presents us with an enlightening & stimulating portrait of the man and his music.’ musicwebinternational.com/2024/12/sun-...

submitted 103 days ago • 4 comments

Feeling seasonal, so made some orange and cranberry chicken to go with the mighty mighty Christmas Oratorio. 🍊

submitted 105 days ago • 1 comment

If Haydn’s quartets were the only music you let me hear I would still thank you with tears in my eyes. Absolutely astounding magic.

submitted 130 days ago • 6 comments

Penguin’s big fat haiku book is so wonderful. And here’s the most famous one of them all: Bashō’s exquisite reminder of the spring and life which follow winter and death.

submitted 130 days ago • 2 comments