Waldstein's Gallerie

Several volumes have been quite enough for Alex to proclaim Somerset Maugham, a trifle rashly perhaps, the greatest master of the short story the English language has ever seen.…

Alex and Tennessee.

Alex and G.B.H.

Alex and Arturo.

Alex and Franz.

Alex and Jorge.

Alex and Jorge.

Alex and Jorge.

Alex is currently listening to Gabriella Cilmi's debut album.

Alex and Gabriella.

Alex and Demis - in the 1970s.

Alex and Demis.

Alex and Foo Fighters.

Alex and Richard.

Alex and Captain Morgan.

Alex and cocktail candies.

Alex, Freddie and Montserrat.

Alex and The Great Pretender.

Alex and a bunch of greasy mechanics.

Alex and Black Sabbath in 1970.

Alex and the Chair.

Alex and Queen

Alex and Freddie

Alex and Freddie.

Alex and Gabriella

Alex and the keyboard.

Alex and the keyboard.

Alex on the candelabra.

Alex and Wolfi.

Alex, Wolfi and piano concertos.

Alex and GBS.

Alex and GBS.

Alex and Piotr.

Alex and Piotr.

Alex and the worst Liszt recording ever made.

Alex and football.

Alex and Queen.

Alex and Whitney.

Alex and Volodya, in Lisztian waters.

Alex and the Moose.

Alex and the Black Sheep.

Alex in Liverpool.

Alex and his own band.

Alex and the Metallicats.

Alex on a drinking spree.

Alex and Robbie.

Alex is currently conducting the symphonic works of Sergei.

Alex and Queen during the wild 1970s.

Alex and Queen in the disco.

Alex and Die Toten Hosen in a piratical mood.

Alex and Otello.

Alex as the Master of Horses.

Alex and Louis Kentner playing Liszt on two hands and two hoofs.

Alex in the Deep South.

Alex and Gladiator.

Alex and Die Toten Hosen.

Alex in a metal mood.

Alex is currently listening to Claudio

Alex and Music

Alex as a headbanger.

Alex and Carmen

Alex on a Wagnerian quest.

Alex and the Birmingham Four (c1970)

Alex with Ronnie, Vinnie, Tony and Geezer (1992).

Alex on a Shakespearean quest.

Alex on the verge of completing a massive reading project.

Alex and JSB.

Alex and Tennessee.

Alex and Herbie - in colour.

Alex and Giuseppe Di Stefano.

Alex and Claude.

Alex is currently listening to Jorge Bolet's 1970 recording of Liszt's Transcendental Studies.

Alex is currently listening to Jorge Bolet's 1972/73 Liszt recordings for RCA.

Alex is currently listening to Jorge Bolet's complete Liszt recordings for Decca.

Alex and Jorge.

Alex and Jorge.

Alex is currently reading Stephen King.

Alex and Lord Byron.

Alex is currently reading Byron.

Alex and his great friend, Johnny Bear, are currently reading John Steinbeck.

Alex and Jim.

Alex and Mario.

Alex and Mario.

Alex and Mario.

Alex is currently reading Bertrand Russell's History of Western Philosophy (1946).

Alex is currently exploring the Penguin Classics shelf. He is not likely to be bored in the diverse company of Edward Gibbon, William Shakespeare, Oscar Wilde, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Jane…

Alex and Richard.

Alex is currently studying the Sistine Chapel Ceiling.

Alex and Philip Guedalla.

Alex and his new girlfriend (Renata Tebaldi as Violetta in Verdi's La Traviata)

Alex and Jorge Bolet.

Alex and Otello.

Alex and Arturo.

Alex and Alexis (Weissenberg).

Alex and Boris Christoff (as Philip II in Verdi's Don Carlo).

Alex and his old car: Trabant, a nostalgic glance back to East Germany...

Alex and his great friend, the mammoth.

Alex with another two of his great friends from the animal kingdom: the hippo and the ape.

Alex and his new car.

Alex is currently reading Of Human Bondage in Bulgarian.

Alex has many dreams. One of them - playing on Bechstein - has just become true. This is the sound!

Alex is currently reading one of the strongest contenders for a single desert-island book.

Alex and Will.

Alex and Oscar Peterson (live in Munich one summer night of 1998).

Alex and Willie's own hand.

Alex, David and a leatherback turtle, somewhere in Malaysia.

Alex and a sprouting coconut on the beach, somewhere in Oceania.

Alex and Gerald Haxton.

Alex and Willie, old-age style.

Alex and Lenny, in somewhat younger days.

Alex and Alec (Waugh).

Alex and Jackie Collins.

Alex and Willie.

Alex and Alan (Walker).

Alex and Herbie.

Alex and Deryck Cooke.

Alex and Adolf. (Lest any misunderstanding should arise, it must be stressed that Alex is merely reading John Toland's fascinating biography.)

Alex and Lear.

Alex and a fanatical jihad leader.

Alex and the Moor.

Alex, Richard III and Salvador Dali.

Alex and the Dane.

Alex is currently studying music theory. Amazing stuff! Is it really true, he wonders, that the difference between major and minor scales is a mere semitone? If so, it seems that Sainte-Beuve and…

Alex and Giacomo Puccini.

Alex and Georges Bizet.

Alex and Johannes Brahms.

Alex on a Lisztian quest.

Alex, Lenny and Christa, shortly before performing the Jeremiah Symphony with the Israel Philharmonic in Berlin, 1977.

Alex and the Voice of God.

Alex dreams of going to New York. Until that happens, if ever, "Rhapsody in Blue" and "West Side Story" will have to do - even when incongruously recorded with the LAPO.

Alex is quite smitten with Ethel Barrymore.

Alex and Tchaikovsky.

Alex and Richard - and the indifferent writing of Charles Osborne!

Alex and Stanley Kowalski.

Alex and Jorge Bolet.

Alex and an overdose of Cuba Libre...

Alex ready for travel.

Alex is currently reading Bryan Magee's Aspects of Wagner for 37th time...

Alex and Liszt Ferenc.

Alex and Serge.

Alex is very much pleased that horses have done a much better job than humans, evolution-wise.

Alex and David.

Alex and the great Norwegian explorer Thor Heyerdahl.

Alex and Willie.

Alex and Harold Schonberg, the most pugnacious (and the most perceptive!) music critic since Bernard Shaw.

Alex and Arthur, contemplating the universe and our place in it.

Alex and his most favourite book...

Alex has fallen in love with Vivien - but not with Mr Walker's biography.

To read, or not to read - that is the question; Whether 'tis nobler to ignore in mind Robin's rants Or to take the keyboard against his gossipy pen And by opposing him expose his vile…

Alex and GBS.

Alex is currently reading The Dyer's Hand by W. H. Auden, a beautifully written and extremely thought-provoking collection of essays.

Instead of reading Matthew's gospel, Alex much prefers listening to Bach's version of it.

Alex on a Shakespearean quest.

Alex and Willie.

Alex, Tennessee and Elizabeth.

Alex and Tennessee.

Alex on a Tennessean quest.

Alex and Arthur Hailey.

Alex and JFK.

Alex and Michael.

Alex, Tennessee and Andy Warhol.

Alex and Larry - 45 years later.

Alex and Larry.

Alex on music.

Alex and Hollywood.

Alex is currently reading a horror classic.

Searching for shelter among Maugham scholars. In vain.

Living on the edge...

Shakespeare is crushing you!

Alex and Lenny.

Alex is currently sailing the Pacific on a balsa raft...

Alex is currently reading The Song of Hiawatha by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow.

Alex is such a computer geek, that I have virtually no access to the laptop. As you might divine, he spends most of his time in LibraryThing...

Alex is currently playing the piano works of Maurice Ravel: real finger-breakers, or hoof-breakers in his case...

Alex is currently reading about Arturo.

Alex and his new favourite author: Deryck Cooke.

Alex is currently reading Erwin Schrödinger's masterpiece What is Life?.

Alex is currently reading Arthur Clarke's collected short stories.

Alex is currently exploring Arthur's non-fiction writings.

Alex on yet another Clarkian quest. In the process he has developed a strange passion for old paperbacks with dashing covers.

Alex is currently reading a fine collection of great short stories by Arthur Clarke.

Alex really enjoys the selected non-fiction writings of Arthur Clarke. But he is a little offended by the title. After all, what's wrong with the carbon-based quadrupeds, such as horses for instance?

Alex on another Clarkian quest...

Alex on a Clarkian quest.

When he is tired of reading, Alex relaxes with a special kind of music.

Alex has embarked on a massive Rachmaninoff study.

Alex and Willie: great friends already.

Alex is perfectly dismayed at the abridged edition of Of Human Bondage done, or at least sanctioned, by Maugham himself.

Alex has just finished reading Somerset Maugham's Of Human Bondage which he immediately declared to be a supreme masterpiece.

Alex is currently reading Roger Vaughan's stylishly written biographical portrait of Herbert von Karajan.

It is a truth universally acknowledged - that it is not only Jane Austen who causes reading addiction. Willie Maugham does that too. Even when sunset makes reading dangerous for his delicate eyes,…

Alex is currently exploring Somerset Maugham's oeuvre: daunting but rewarding task.

Alex dreams of going to Finland, Minnesota. As for the European Finland, he is convinced that a bottle of Finladia will do very nicely.

Alex and Willie - among books, appropriately.

Alex finds it really difficult to believe that such a vast body of musical criticism (on the right) and drama (on the left) was actually written by the same man. Yet it happens to be true.

To say that the figure of Bernard Shaw is imposing is indeed a gross understatement.

Alex is currently reading Somerset Maugham.

The first meeting between Alex and Bertrand Russell was a pretty stormy one. But since then he has come to appreciate Lord Russell's writings, perhaps because of the huge amount of horse sense they…

Alex is deeply fascinated by George Bernard Shaw.

Alex is currently reading the monumental study of Tchaikovsky's life and music by David Brown. So we three - he, I, and David - have lots of fruitful/fruitless (it depends on the occasion)…

Alex is currently listening to Beethoven's Piano Concertos.

Alex is currently reading The Summing Up.

Alex with one of his more commendable passions: books.

Alex has undergone a most spectacular religious transformation. He is now a zealous follower of Jesus Christ and more or less an ardent Catholic.

Forget Mozart: Alex is now crazy about grunge, especially Nirvana.

Alex trying to learn the French - the language, I mean.

Alex and Mozart: eine kleine Liebesaffäre.

Acrobatics in the office.

Alex on his favourite place - my knee.

Alex disguised as Santa Claus.

Everybody has to bear his own - well, keys.