SOURCE: “My Dinners With Isaiah,” in Commonweal, Vol. CXXXV, No. 14, August 14, 1998, pp. 15-6.

In the following reminiscence, O'Gorman writes of Berlin's love of music.

Isaiah Berlin (1907-97), my friend of only six years, was the happiest man I ever met. He simply knew all about it. He saw the shadows and the terrible light hidden in the shadows. He listened to the world as he listened to Schubert and Bach, as he read Akhmatova and Herzen, touching them with his wit and the speed of his manner. What he perceived in literature and art, in political epochs and in their recorders, in composers and musicians, in the fine differences between virtuoso pianists Alfred Brendel and Sviatoslav Richter and their interpretations of Schubert, was a prodigy of practical knowledge, grace, and almost transcendent intuition.

He told me at our first meeting in Oxford, in April 1991, that he was an...