A long, long time ago, boys and girls, there was a very funny TV series called Get Smart, starring a Borscht Belt comic named Don Adams as a brain-addled superspy named Maxwell Smart and a cute-as-a-button gamine named Barbara Feldon as his trusty sidekick, Agent 99. This was before most of you were born. Adams left the building for the big Grossinger’s in the Sky a long time ago but Barbara Feldon, Agent 99, is alive and well and appearing this Wednesday night at 8 pm with the early music ensemble Parthenia, a Consort of Viols, in Hot Off the

It’s now just a smidge over seven years since Iannis Xenakis died. And almost exactly 13 years ago, Xenakis sat down for this amicable interview in English: [youtube]mfwam-jqMn4[/youtube] This is the first ten minutes; its poster, Edward Lawes, promises a second part in the near future. (And if anyone recognises who Xenakis is talking with in the video, fill me in.)

I get a lot of review CDs.  Most of them I listen to once, or not at all, and pass them along to the four or five people who have proven to be reliable reviewers.  It is rare that a recording makes me stop everything and listen.  Jenny Lin’s new recording of two major piano works by Ernest Bloch with the SWR Rundfunkorcheter Kaiserslautern, under Jiri Starek, is one of those rare moments.  I must confess that I didn’t know the Concerto Symphonique but I’m inclined to take the word of David Hurwitz at Classics Today who has pronounced it “one of the 20th century’s great masterpieces

I. Early in our conversation yesterday, Hilary Hahn, loquacious and genial throughout, was chatting openly about music and athleticism; about how half her practice time was geared towards staying in shape; how solo recitals were more physically draining than chamber and concerto performances; how different halls, players, even A’s demanded great flexibility; and how flexibility and one’s ear were integral to the athleticism she strove to maintain. I commented on how some pieces were meant just to be big flashy fluffs, and that this was fine; have fun, play fast, show ’em you can hit those notes – not everything’s

New York Philharmonic.  North Korea.  Discuss. p.s. Steve Smith is on the scene. WGBH will air one of the concerts live online on Sunday, March 2, from 3-5 pm. Tuesday Update:  Great picture of Steve at the airport in North Korea.

The Yale at Carnegie concert series will honor distinguished faculty member Ezra Laderman at Weill Recital Hall at 8pm on March 3 with a program that features a career-spanning range of Laderman’s chamber works, from his 1954 Bassoon Concerto to the New York premiere of Interior Landscapes II for two pianos, written in 2007. Laderman (b. 1924) continues the line of distinguished composer-pedagogues at Yale, which has included Paul Hindemith, Krzystof Penderecki, and Jacob Druckman. His ties to the Yale School of Music run deep; after joining the YSM community as a composer-in-residence in 1988, he served as the Dean