The other day I saw the glorious Takács Quartet play an all-Bartók program at the William Andrews Clark Memorial Library in Los Angeles. This singular institution, part of the UCLA system, has an excellent music series and an excellent, if slightly distracting, music room in which to listen. Clark, as cultural Angelenos will know, was himself a singular character. The aesthetic gay heir to a profoundly corrupt copper fortune, he assembled one of the world's leading collections of Oscar Wilde materials — hence the Oscar portrait hanging in the mansion. He also founded the Los Angeles Philharmonic. More about him and his circle can be found in Liz Brown's riveting, disconcerting book Twilight Man. More on the Bartók at a later date.
