The Marshals of Alexander's Empire; Waldemar Heckel; 1992

I have been stalking the 2000 reprint of this book for a number of years, but its high price has always caused me to talk myself down from the brink of buying it.  Well... Sarahmac found a copy for well under three figures and snatched it up as a Christmas present, and I spent all of January reading it.

I didn't realize this had started out as Heckel's dissertation, and because I don't know ancient Greek or Latin (and my German is out of shape**), his direct quotes of others' works are mostly Greek to me.  Following up all of the footnotes would require having Arrian, Plutarch, Curtius, Justin, and Diodorus on hand (ideally in the original languages, and not in translation, like my copies), and I didn't want to stop in the middle of Heckel's narrative, so I left those on the shelf. 

In the end, despite the fact that I couldn't take full advantage of the information inside, this is a fabulous reference book full of biographies of the major and minor officers from Alexander's accession to the throne to his death.  It's a useful entry in the library of even the casual Alexander historian, so I'm keeping it. 

As it's about the "marshals" of the empire, there's very little on the women; for that, you'd need to read Carney's possibly even more fabulous (and more reasonably priced) Women and Monarchy in Macedonia.


** there are a lot of German historians of Alexander the Great.  I'll leave as an exercise to the reader whether this Teutonic obsession with a "superman" is disturbing.  My excuse is that I'm a redhead named Alex.

Indulgences

One last tidbit from Friday night's concert: the back page of the season program featured a joint advertisement by Artistelle, the Vermont Brownie Company, and Beltrami Photography.

Because if you're going to eat a brownie, you have to burn off those calories somehow.  And if you take a picture, it'll last longer.

Piano Music: Beatrice Rana

I had the great pleasure of seeing Beatrice Rana perform last night as part of the Lane Series Piano Consortium's efforts to bring the Van Cliburn medalists to Vermont.  The tickets were a birthday present, and so there was the added irony of going to see a professional who was half my age.

The program was comprised of three pieces I was not familiar with:

1. J.S. Bach's Partita No. 1 in B-flat Major, BWV 825.  The Allmusic description isn't bad; I would add that gigue feels like a composer's joke, with the left hand bouncing back and forth over the right in an ever-shrinking arc, until the left is stretched out over the right as they play simultaneously.  This is the sort of thing that is most fun to watch live.
2. Robert Schumann's Symphonic Etudes, op. 13.  This provided a good bridge between the Bach and Prokofiev. 
3. Sergei Prokofiev's Sonata No. 6 in A Major, op. 83 [there was a typo in the program; this is actually op. 82, and Sonata No. 7 is op. 83].  Together, these three pieces showcased Rana's range, from the clockwork precision of Bach to the controlled chaos of Prokofiev, ending with thunder as Rana literally lifted herself off the piano bench with the force of her final notes. 

The other highlight of the night was in the director's introductory remarks, which she kept mercifully brief, while also mentioning all the important donors and plugging next week's Valentine's Day performance, which would allow you to "Score major points with your sweetheart or a complete stranger."  That received a well-deserved chuckle from the audience.