“Beatrix Potter: Drawn to Nature,” at the Morgan Museum & Library, New York (opens February 23): “Drawn to Nature” is an appropriate subtitle for a new exhibition at the Morgan Library dedicated to the author Beatrix Potter (1866–1943). Best known for her stories of Peter Rabbit, the children’s book author drew on her own botanical and animal studies from Scotland and the English Lake District, where she lived as a sheep breeder and land conservationist (she eventually donated four thousand acres from her Hill Top farm to the National Trust). This exhibition of drawings, books, and manuscripts, organized by the Morgan’s Philip Palmer and originally seen at London’s Victoria & Albert Museum, explores Potter’s deep burrow in the British countryside to unearth the origin of her beloved characters. —JP
“Emanuel Ax, Hillborg, and Rachmaninoff,” performed by the New York Philharmonic (February 22–24): Last week, the New York Philharmonic gave us Rachmaninoff’s Rhapsody on a Theme by Paganini, which the composer wrote at his Villa Senar in Switzerland in the summer of 1934. Like the Rhapsody with its streamlined structure and playful, jazzy flourishes, Rachmaninoff’s modernist villa showed that the composer wasn’t quite the stuffy Romantic his critics made him out to be. Rachmaninoff’s style continued to progress when he sat down at Senar to write his Symphony No. 3 in 1935. In fact, his newfound “modernism” shocked his audiences and allies, and reception was mixed. “It’s quite possible,” the disappointed composer still believed, “that in fifty years’ time it will be rediscovered . . . and become a sensational success.” Discover for yourself this Thursday, Friday, and Saturday at Lincoln Center with the New York Philharmonic under Eun Sun Kim. The pianist Emanuel Ax is the soloist in the New York premiere of Anders Hillborg’s Piano Concerto No. 2, and Sibelius’s Finlandia starts things off. —IS
Concerto for Two Pianos, by Tiler Peck (through February 24) & Solitude, by Alexei Ratmansky (through February 27), at New York City Ballet: This winter has seen the debut of two new dances at City Ballet: Tiler Peck’s Concerto for Two Pianos and Alexei Ratmansky’s Solitude. The former is Peck’s first choreographed work; the latter is Ratmansky’s eighty-first. For Concerto, Peck selected Francis Poulenc’s skittish score of the same name—a choice consistent with the brisk, athletic style that has made her the face of the company in recent years. Something more sepulchral is expected for Solitude, however, which takes for its setting the “Funeral March” from Mahler’s first symphony and the Adagietto of his fifth. Balletomanes are lucky this week to have the chance to see these fresh offerings before the season concludes—look to Jane Coombs for a complete review of both in the coming days. —LL
“Rediscovering New York’s Art Deco Architecture,” with Anthony W. Robins, at the General Society Library (February 27): While not native to New York, Art Deco has something very New York about it, in its fusion of the highly stylized with the highly industrialized. Any tour of architectural sights in New York will naturally include those temples to Deco, Rockefeller Center and the Chrysler Building, but a roving eye will discover many more splendid 1920s and ’30s examples throughout the city, from the bison head at 20 Exchange Place (1931) to the vegetal decorative metalwork of the doors of 3 East Eighty-fourth Street (1928), and much more besides. On February 27, Anthony W. Robins, an architectural historian and Deco devotee, will give an illustrated talk on New York’s Art Deco wonders at the General Society Library. —BR
Podcasts
“Music for a While #84: A world of (love) songs”
Jay Nordlinger, The New Criterion’s music critic, talks music—but, more important, plays music.
From the Archives
“The importance of T. E. Lawrence,” by David Fromkin (September 1991). On the legacy of T. E. Lawrence.
Dispatch
“Mamet’s map,” by Joshua T. Katz. On David Mamet’s “Lessons from Aerial Navigation.”