In Impromptus today, after the usual fulminating about politics, I have a few notes on culture (where plenty of fulminating can occur, too). I say something about Julia Fischer: the young German violinist who also plays the piano. In an almost-famous concert, which took place in Frankfurt in 2008, she played the Grieg Piano Concerto, followed by one of the Saint-Saëns violin concertos. In my column, I say, “A neat trick. She is a Dave DeBusschere of music . . .”

(Dave, you will recall, was an NBA player and a Major League Baseball player. For a while, he was kind of a byword for versatility.)

Well, the musicologist Robert Marshall writes to tell me about a “triple-threat man” — Frederick Vogelgesang, a violinist who played in many orchestras, including the NBC Symphony and the New York Philharmonic. He was also a pianist and a French hornist. (No, not a Frenchman who played the horn.) He once made a recording of the Brahms Horn Trio, playing all three parts.

Of course, Vogelgesang should have played some Messiaen, too. (I am being goofy, as it’s sometimes good to be, when you’re taking time off from Libya, for example, where people are being slaughtered in the streets. “Vogelgesang,” in German, means “birdsong.” Olivier Messiaen wrote much birdsong into his music.)