International Readers for my "National" Site

I have come to expect that the readership levels on my national Examiner.com site fall far short of those on my San Francisco site. Still, I track both of these site with Google Analytics. It gives me a certain sense of humility with regard to "national" readership; but, every now and then, it surprises me with bumps of interest on the national level. Of course the main thing that Google Analytics tells me about those who read the national site is that most of them are from the San Francisco Bay Area. For a while there is been a level of interest in New York that tends to follow, but never rises to the level of, Bay Area interest. This morning, however, I discovered that, while New York interest has fallen off, it is at the same level as interest coming from Berlin.

I know that I have had overseas readers sprinkled around my Google Analytics data for some time. These often involve occasional surges in unlikely places, such as the Philippines. However, having lived in Singapore, I know how those living in area in which classical music does not received a lot of attention tend to read just about anything they can find on the topic. Berlin, on the other hand, is quite a different matter. I suspect that Berliners have plenty of sources to consult without having to worry about renegade views from San Francisco.

One possibility is that this bump is due to a recent piece I wrote about the harmonia mundi album of Ludwig van Beethoven's chamber music for cello and piano featuring Jean-Guihen Queyras on cello and Alexander Menikov on piano. I know that Melnikov has performed several times in the United States, even making it out to San Francisco; but I suspect that Queyras is still known here only through his recordings. On the other hand both of them are probably much better known among the music lovers in Berlin; so perhaps there is a "critical mass" of them curious about American impressions of how they perform as a duo!