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In August 2013, two years after our family traded the Upper West Side of Manhattan for Hawaii's Valley Isle, the Maui Academy of Performing Arts put on Les Misérables, a mammoth project involving 58 actors, an offstage chorus of 17, and a 26-piece live orchestra. The director was David C. Johnston, a mainland-born and -trained Svengali who fetched up on Maui in 1992 and never looked back, forging community players of varying talent along with the occasional seasoned pro into quality ensembles.

On June 15, The New Yorker published Alex Ross's article "Jürgen Habermas Defended Reason in a Darkening Age: The great German philosopher, who died in March, understood how much depended on a principled public sphere." Philosophy is out of my depth, pretty much, but the sharp intelligence at work in Alex's prize-winning music journalism and books is well known to me, and his subtitle struck an instant spark with the enlightened, responsible denizen of Spaceship Earth I aspire to be.

\ Gary Oldman—our vote for best screen actor of the year If the movies he has played in tell the truth about him, Gary Oldman is not scared of the dark. He courts it; he revels in it; he flies to it like the moth to the flame. His face is never more radiant than an instant before the lights go out. Oldman's career is still young. Sid and Nancy, in which he made his film debut, came out four years ago; Prick Up Your Ears, a year later.

I first met David Hockney two decades ago as chronicler of the first cycles of the Rolex Mentor and Protégé Arts Initiative, the sort of assignment that comes one's way once in a lifetime. Of the candidates put forward to work with David, he selected the German painter Matthias Weischer, and it's safe to say that I learned at least as much from the encounters I witnessed as either of the principals. In the years that followed, I kept in sporadic touch with both as opportunities arose.

Have you seen High Wire: Calder's Circus at 100 at the Whitney? If so, you'll know how hard it is to tear yourself away. Surprise! I was running late when I raced out the revolving door two weeks ago to catch the matinee of Arabella at the Met. Meant to dash to the subway, but instead hopped a waiting cab with its nose pointed straight to the West Side Highway, and named my destination. "Lincoln Center!," the cabbie exclaimed.

Upstairs, the imperial couple's abandoned hospital cum luxury spa. Downstairs, the ). Downstairs, the live-in dye house of Barak (Josef Wagner) and his nameless Mrs. Barak (Aušrinė Stundytė). The impala in the overcoat stalking through their office is Keikobad, ruler of the spirit world (mime unidentified), a figure the creators of Die Frau ohne Schatten kept offstage, here a constant presence. Photo: Ruth Walz.

As its sole all-Balanchine program for the winter season, the New York City Ballet offered a diptych of The Four Temperaments (1946) and Liebeslieder Waltzer (1960), which is a diptych in its own right (we'll get to that). Symphony in Three Movements (1972), Ballo della Regina (1978), and (not on my dance card) Tschaikovsky Pas de Deux (1960) made appearances on mixed bills.

Hello, friends! Except under exceptional circumstances, book reviewing is a cup I'd prefer to let pass. But in the last couple weeks, I've made the effort gladly on behalf of Jeremy Eichler's Time's Echo: The Second World War, the Holocaust, and the Music of Remembrance, published in August by Knopf (reviewed in , for my debut there), and of Kao Kalia Yang's , just out from Simon & Schuster (reviewed in Air Mail). Both titles have received kudos aplenty.

Karinska's crucial contribution to the Balanchine corpus is especially so in the chamber-scaled Liebeslieder Walzer. Only four dancing couples appear. The first half is given over to glorified ballroom dances. Then the curtain falls briefly, the women change from floor-length ecru evening dresses and pumps to black-laced romantic mid-length tutus and pointe shoes, and rapturous ballet ensues.

In a sound check before the last of three concerts, Riccardo Muti shared with the players of the Vienna Philharmonic his premonition that the afternoon's performance would be his last at Carnegie Hall. Photo © Chris Lee NEW YORK — Who denies the nimbus of the Golden Hall of the Musikverein, home of the Vienna Philharmonic?