By ANNE MIDGETTE [NY Times, 3 January 2006]

Some time ago I went to a concert at Carnegie Hall that involved a lot of talking from the stage. I was pleased with the way the performer engaged audience members by talking to them between numbers, using a hand-held microphone; and the audience seemed responsive and involved. A week or so later, I spoke on the phone to a friend I had run into at the concert and asked him what he and his wife had thought of it. I wondered if they had found the approach distressingly populist. "Well," my friend said, "we liked the music; but as for the talking, we couldn't understand a single word he said."