Author: NY TIMES

Chopin: ÉtudesYunchan Lim, piano (Decca)The pianist Yunchan Lim, who recently turned 20, debuted at Carnegie Hall in February with an old-school program: all 24 of Chopin’s études. His first album on the Decca label, playing those same 24 devilishly difficult pieces — 12 each in Op. 10 and 25 — is old-school, too. The cover photo, shot on film, has Lim nearly engulfed in moody shadow, an image that, along with the font, evokes classical music’s glamorous mid-20th century.The aim seems to be to position him as an heir to that era’s keyboard titans. It’s hardly a difficult task. After…

Hamas released a video on Wednesday apparently showing Hersh Goldberg-Polin, an Israeli American dual citizen who has been held hostage since the Oct. 7 terrorist attack on Israel. It appeared to be the first time that Mr. Goldberg-Polin, who was grievously injured in the attack, has been shown to be alive since his captivity began.It is not clear when the video was filmed, but in it Mr. Goldberg-Polin, who was 23 when he was abducted, says he has been held hostage for nearly 200 days, suggesting the video was made recently. He also wishes his parents a happy holiday, which…

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel said on Wednesday that protests at U.S. universities against Israel’s war in Gaza were “horrific” and should be stopped, using his first public comments on the subject to castigate the student demonstrators and portray them as antisemitic.Mr. Netanyahu’s comments could harden division over the demonstrations. They could also give ammunition to Republican leaders who have criticized the protesters and accused university administrators and Democrats of failing to protect Jewish students from attack.“What’s happening in America’s college campuses is horrific,” Mr. Netanyahu said. “Antisemitic mobs have taken over leading universities. They call for the annihilation…

Some debates deserve their own stage.So while our (anonymous) NBA Player Poll was released on Monday and had a record 142 players weigh in on some of the most interesting questions about their league, we decided to delve a little deeper into the age-old GOAT discussion because there’s a Fascinating voting trends must be explored.While Michael Jordan won his third consecutive “Greatest of All Time” award, his massive lead over LeBron James shrank significantly with each passing vote. This time, James almost took over the burden. The data speaks loud and clear… 2019 (first Competitor poll was conducted): Jordan received…

What made her so captivating then (the film critic Pauline Kael called her the “female Buster Keaton”) still exists: a raw honesty, an intuitive quality and a winsome Texas drawl.“I remember, on ‘Saturday Night Live,’” Mr. Gilroy said, “they did a joke in which they were in some kind of room and you could hear the neighbors right through the wall, and one of the lines was, “These walls are thinner than Shelley Duvall!”Her disappearance wasn’t, as it had been rumored, born of a protracted breakdown caused years before by her treatment on the set of “The Shining.” In fact,…

When the N.F.L. took its college draft on the road a decade ago, its first stops were Chicago, Philadelphia and Dallas, three of the league’s biggest markets.The concept was an instant hit, turning a show cloistered for a half century in hotels and theaters in Manhattan into a free, three-day football festival that drew hundreds of thousands of fans, many driving long distances to attend.Soon, more than a dozen cities were raising their hands to host the event. Unlike the N.F.L.’s marquee event, the Super Bowl, the draft does not require extensive public subsidies, hotels and security. It is also…

Just over a year ago, lawmakers displayed a rare show of bipartisanship when they grilled Shou Chew, TikTok’s chief executive, about the video app’s ties to China. Their harsh questioning suggested that Washington was gearing up to force the company to sever ties with its Chinese owner — or even ban the app.Then came mostly silence. Little emerged from the House committee that held the hearing, and a proposal to enable the administration to force a sale or ban TikTok fizzled in the Senate.But behind the scenes, a tiny group of lawmakers began plotting a secretive effort that culminated on…

The abortion case before the Supreme Court on Wednesday featured vigorous questioning and comments, particularly by the three liberal justices. At issue is whether Idaho’s near-total ban on abortion is so strict that it violates a federal law requiring emergency care for any patient, including providing abortions for pregnant women in dire situations.A ruling could reverberate beyond Idaho, to at least half a dozen other states that have similarly restrictive bans.The implications of the case could also extend beyond abortion, including whether states can legally restrict other types of emergency medical care and whether the federal law opens the door…

Why is it called “Uncle Vanya”? All the man does is mope, mope harder, try to do something other than moping, fail miserably and mope some more.You can’t blame him. Vanya has spent most of his nearly 50 years scraping thin profit from a provincial estate, and not even for himself. The money he makes, running the farm with his unmarried niece, goes to support life in the city for his fatuous, gouty sort-of-ex-brother-in-law, an art professor who “knows nothing about art.” Also, Vanya is hopelessly in love with the old man’s exquisitely languorous young wife, who, reasonably enough, finds…

On a Monday morning last month, tech executives, engineers and sales representatives from Amazon, Google, TikTok and other companies endured a three-hour traffic jam as their cars crawled toward a mammoth conference at an event space in the desert, 50 miles outside Riyadh.The lure: billions of dollars in Saudi money as the kingdom seeks to build a tech industry to complement its oil dominance.To bypass the congestion, frustrated eventgoers drove onto the highway shoulder, kicking up plumes of desert sand as they sped past those following traffic rules. A lucky few took advantage of a special freeway exit dedicated to…