The Philharmonic Society of Orange launches this season’s “What Makes Music Beautiful?” lecture series on Monday with pianist Leon Fleisher as guest speaker and performer. The event will feature a mini-recital (we’re told it’ll be music for the left hand), a screening of the Academy Award-nominated Fleisher documentary “Two Hands,” an interview (with your favorite music critic, in a rare local appearance, as interlocutor), a question-and-answer session with the audience and wine tasting. Sounds civilized, doesn’t it?
Fleisher and I actually go way back. When I was a student in the music criticism program at the Peabody Conservatory in Baltimore, Fleisher would come to our classes and explain to us, in the nicest possible way, just how wrong we all were.
You can bet I’m going to ask him about studying with Schnabel and Monteux.
classical life 
HOW CAN I ATTEND ONE OF THESE SESSIONS. LEBA
Just buy a ticket, Leba. You can call 949-553-2422, or go to the link on the blog post (under Here are the details) and purchase there.
Hi Tim,
Is this lecture going to be recorded. I’d love to hear it! Please let us all know about it.
I attended the interview and mini-concert and it was wonderful.
I appreciated how Leon Fleisher so respectfully, and strongly, supported music criticism. He sees critics as crucial to keeping standards up in the arts. There was no flattery involved just because a music critic was interviewing him, either– you could see that his comment was sincere.
I liked Fleisher’s Martin Bernheimer quote: “A critic is a man who describes accidents to the eye witnesses.”