Dina (aided in cultural battle by her kindly yet exceptionally aesthetically keen husband Roger Shapiro, a psychiatrist of tall patrician mien) attempted to uphold the highest musical and intellectual standards during the increasingly difficult Carter-Reagan-Bush-Clinton-Bush years in Washington in which I knew her.

I recall sharing my CD of Udo Zimmermann’s “The White Rose” with her after it came out. It was a work that she enormously wanted to program upstairs at the Kennedy Center or at the Library of Congress, but she knew she could not secure funding for the additional musician services required. The thought of not being able to produce the Washington premiere of the work saddened her. I also recall sharing my copies of hand-notated Sofia Gubaidulina scores with her; and I remember her at the Library of Congress reading room one afternoon analyzing, in a non-Schenkerian manner, ‘difficult’ bass-line passages in late piano sonatas of Beethoven which were influencing her own late creative re-blossoming. I also recall her outspoken anger at the commencement of the war in Iraq a decade ago.

On with the two Library of Congress shows in her memory tonight and tomorrow night…