LUCKY WASO

Oh, here's some news. West Australian Symphony Orchestra gets Asher Fisch for three years starting 2014. I'm madly envious for them, although surely we will get some benefits on the east coast. At the very least, I'd fly there to hear him, repertoire depending, in what is regarded as the best acoustic hall in the country. I was fortunate enough to experience his Adelaide Ring Cycle, hear him speak, and say hello at the lobby coffee shop.

Dare I say I wish he were at the helm of the Melbourne Ring 2013.

ONE BLUE SKY ABOVE US

                                 


Oslo. It's impossible to imagine how they feel. In case you haven't seen it ....






One blue sky above us
One ocean lapping all our shore
One earth so green and round
Who could ask for more
And because I love you
I'll give it one more try
To show my rainbow race
It's too soon to die.


My source and more details here.

A CHANGE OF SEASON

                         

Easter rushed up and flew past with that huge creamy moon watching it all. I thought there would be time for stillness and thought, and gardening and musing, and reading and listening. There was a little of each but the days got lost somewhere. We did have a big lunch on Easter Sunday. I cooked and I think it went well. The house was dressed and I lit candles. Just had to.

Growing up at this time of year I remember quite fondly, with blind belief in the Christian spin that was put on what is really an ancient reawakening celebration. Our family was serious about the Christ and the resurrection, and the Easter services in the (fabulous now I look back on it) Spanish revival Catholic Church on the hill were exciting. There was the bleak sombre guilt trip of Good Friday, all the statues draped in black, and then the thrill of staying up late on Saturday for the 11pm service, where outside the doors to the church a big 44 gallon drum was filled with burning wood, and we would light candles and walk solemnly into the darkened church, in readiness for midnight when the celebrants would walk in, more candles, lights turned on, flowers revealed, statues uncovered again in all their gaudy plaster glory, incense, bells, and a choir and organ and singing. I didn't think too much to about it all really, except that it was now Sunday, and Lent was over and feasting was on. Mum cooked and Dad hid eggs in the garden.

That was a long time ago. In just about every respect you can possibly think of.

It wasn't till a bitterly ear-achingly cold Easter in New York that I came to appreciate what this time was all about. After all, it was Autumn where I'd grown up. Awakening wasn't on the agenda. The bulbs and the blossons were bursting in Central Park, where we rode with a blanket over our knees, pulled by a fine horse called Speedo. The Dogwoods were blooming down in the village (we stay at Washington Square), and a new beginning was starting to make sense.

All of which leads, if obliquely, to something that has long fascinated me and what this time of year (and the overcoming of the forces of darkness) is all about - the (wait for it) - placebo effect. Bet you didn't expect that!

From an informal interview with psychologist and Emeritus Professor Nicholas Humphrey, with Richard Dawkins asking the questions, here's something to ponder. (I don't necessarily endorse, especially some of the specifics, of this, the first of a series of four)

More reading here.

ASM

ASM ... Anne-Sophie Mutter ... Anne-Sophie Mutter

See that photo (from the Sydney Morning Herald)? See that dress (gasps as she walked on)? Well that's what we heard. A perfectly fitting golden performance of glittering perfection and decorative brilliance all supported by the strength, and sensuality, of this most wonderful German violinist.

Rather than persist with my incoherent gushing about her and the Beethoven Violin Concerto (Kreisler cadenzas), better that you read Peter McCallum's SMH review - 'Prodigious talent meets profound musical maturity' . And now the Australian (I thought skewing towards the strings in the Shostakovich was what helped make it so brilliant). And again from McCallum. It was a concert for which all the clichés were written - like hearing a new work, time stood still, you know the ones. For example, there were sections (Larghetto becomes Largo-ish) of such slow controlled elegant playing, of hushed reverence, by she of the infinite bow and endless delicacy, that the notes seemed to linger around her, each one added to by the next, till she was the centre of an aura of musical beauty and stillness the like of which I know I'll never experience again. It was something to do with hearing this exquisite playing for the first time. Nothing prepared me.

The relationship with Mr Ashkenazy (with whom she seemed especially close on the night) was significant not only in getting her here, at last, but also in the absolutely stunningly good performance by the orchestra. Talk about cranking it up a notch. It was European playing of the very best kind. It makes one wonder if all the kvetching about the acoustics might better be directed at the ensemble. It seems they can do it. I could go on and on just about the pizzicato, the horns, the winds ... what a great concert, and all the more special for no recording. Contractual issues no doubt.

And thanks to her son whose thoughts on Australia for his gap year may have been the clincher in her Oz debut. May he come, may he stay, may she visit often.

(That's Osawa, not Masur, obviously.)

More? Start here. This is not a pretense; you don't need any German.

The Shostakovich 5 followed. I love it, for its accessibility, its complexity, its profoundity, and its 'best ever' ending! They continued to play brilliantly. My only reservation was it was a pity Richard Miller on tympani didn't get a solo bow. Mr Ashkenazy is good with Russian. He knows. From the programme notes, his thoughts (as a student he met Shostakovich) are:

If you could describe Shostakovich's attitude and what he tried to express in his music, it's simply the tragedy of an individual in impossible circumstances. But we know what he wanted to say because we felt the same as he did, and we somehow deciphered it emotionally and spiritually. We were looking into a mirror of our existence. That's what it was like. It's reality. But reality can be exposed only by genius, in musical terms.

Addit - this interview around which I've now made a separate post needs to slot in here as well:

MORE JOY

Still struggling with time pressures, I offer you this little piece of delight as I do my German homework with term one racing to its end. It is of course the Great One (on tour in Japan 1978, Nagoya, Ricky on the ivories) whose joy of singing is what she was made of.

I love how as she wraps it all up she nearly segues into her Olympia doll routine, followed by her trademark (only one not the usual three) run down and up the scales, before the perfectly placed final cuck-00.

STAYING AFLOAT

(Queen Mary 2 in Sydney, from the smh)

It's been raining and raining. But since I've started this post (several times), we seem to have slipped into some lovely early autumn weather. It changed the day the photograph of the Queen Mary 2 in the heavy morning rain was taken. By that evening (when we heard Isabelle Faust play a brilliant Prokofiev Violin Concerto with the most interesting Matthias Pintscher conducting) as if by the wave of a giant hand, the skies cleared. We hurried around to Mrs Macquarie Chair after the concert, the Queen's three horn blasts echoing around the city, and stood in the cool night air, clouds scattered. Now back in perspective, no longer dwarfing anything and everything, there she went, a black on black shadow except for the lights to hint at the whole, slowly swallowed up by the blackness of Sydney harbour outlined in silver moonlight.

A few Fridays ago Vladimir A conducted the most wonderful concert with Beethoven's 4th piano concerto in the hands of Stephen Kovacevich followed by a particularly thrilling An Alpine Symphony. As already noted, we sat in the stalls with a good eye on the keyboard, and pretty much en face with the strings. Mr Ashkenazy was in fine form and there seemed some special conductor/pianist to pianist/conductor, magic (the magic of understanding) at work between the two.

As tone poems and musical stories go, they don't come much more overt, and as much fun, than Strauss and his mountain. Was this the first time I'd heard Mr A and Strauss? The sheer luxuriousness of the sound, not by force of numbers and organ gel but by terrific ensemble playing, wonderful dynamic control, restraint that was more a tease than a rein, and then that fabulous arrival at the peak in Diana Doherty's worthy control. Here's some shots from a trip up Mt Rigi last year, and the giddy heights of the music I think well had its measure, and certainly trumped the summit, all mist and blue train was all we could see.

A week later there was considerable anticipation for a similar styled programme, this time the Brahm's Violin Concerto and the Strauss Thus Spake Zarathustra. The former is I think my earliest musical memory, from the first age I have clear memories, and what I remember is that it was a time when things just were. It must have been before significant opinions were held, before judgements, before what I think used to be called the age of reason. Amongst all the other things that just were, this was what music was. Needless to say, I hold it dearly for what it is and for where it takes me.

Perhaps not able to escape tiredness and then the shock of disturbing foyer news of another's illness, I found the whole evening less then compelling. And expectation is not a good thing. The Strauss, admittedly far from by favorite work, whose structure I find piecemeal, and now suffering form overexposure and hype, sounded pretty ordinary from where I sat, ordinary of the under-rehearsed kind. Never mind, I was there for the Brahms and Lisa Batiashvili played most elegantly on her Strad. while I sat there wondering if L should be on the plane to Mt Sinai right now instead of sitting just over there. But then what healing music?

Back in those innocent days, Sunday afternoons in a large sunroom on the harbour slopes, a flowering red coral tree against the blue shimmering water and a hazy Manly beyond, this was probably what I was hearing.

UPDATE

Not ill, not washed away, not drowned, and not making light of the latter. Just busy. Several posts have been started and left - there's been a couple of concerts and one HD from the Met (warning - about which I'll feeling rather unsettled and critical).

Meanwhile, here's a little something to bring some joy. And don't take Olga for granted either.