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Guess who’s carrying the Olympic flame (courtesy of many sponsors)

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norman lebrecht

July 01, 2016

He’s the world record holder in the Minute Waltz.

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Petros Linardos says:

July 1, 2016 at 12:20 pm

Not necessarily:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yQ3kqNc-GJc

Jeffrey Biegel says:

July 1, 2016 at 1:51 pm

Love this! Anything Borge is magical. he was a brilliant man who brought music to so many people. His ‘inflationary language’ is still a classic! (I met Victor for three hours back in the 1980s–that’s a story unto itself. A great man was he!)

Good luck to Lang Lang on the Olympic torch! Glad he will do this. It’s nice to see our craft embraced for this occasion!

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Price d'excellence says:

July 1, 2016 at 5:21 pm

Lee Hambro was a remarkable pianist. My wife studied with him at CalArts for two years, and I met him a couple of times. He used to give a concert entitled,”Command Performance”, where the audience received a list, longer than a take away menu, of piano pieces he could play at the drop of a hat. You dropped your choice in a box, and like a raffle the audience choice made up the recital. A phenomenal memory, huge repertoire, and probably more entertaining and original than Mr. Lang Lang! May be HE should stick with the Olympic torch.

Jeffrey Biegel says:

July 1, 2016 at 7:58 pm

He was terrific! Well, my story is brief–when Jascha Zayde was retiring from the circuit with Borge, they were looking for someone else. I was suggested by Bob Sherman of WQXR radio in NY. I traveled to meet up with the great Borge, and we went through several of his routines, which were not as easy as they seemed. In the end, he felt that if I joined him, it would stereotype me as his sidekick, and he believed that would damage my reputation as a serious artist. Perhaps so. I respected that, and retained fond memories of our friendship. (Off topic here, but the door opened to the Victor Borge legacy–a remarkable one at that).

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