So much for that. The catering company lady who interviewed me on Friday has telephoned to inform me that she had talked with my supervisor and that it was decided not to hire me. She offered to mail back my application papers, which offer I accepted, and asked me to give back the company's shirt through Mama. It was a shock. I don't understand if I fell short somehow or if I'm just not what they're looking for (the latter, probably, since I didn't do badly yesterday). Cancelling a tentative work contract after a single day is not flattering. But if they didn't mean to employ me anyway it was good of them to drop me before I become more invested in the work. And it is one step nearer towards the job I actually end up doing.
On the other hand I don't apply for jobs for fun — the application process itself is, speaking from personal experience, less fun than a root canal and much longer — or without being convinced that I could and would do it competently to well. Maybe I don't seem desperate enough for work; but I have too much pride to beg or to toady to people, and it's unfair to pressure people to hire me instead of more qualified and suitable (and, possibly, poor) candidates out of pity. It's not an entirely practical attitude, but it leaves me a sustaining scrap of dignity.
Tuesday, January 19, 2010
Monday, January 18, 2010
One Small Step for Man
[Forgiveness, please, if this goes into too much detail.]
This morning I went to my first day of work at the catering company. It isn't real work yet, but a three-day training and trial period. Unluckily I arrived after 11 a.m., because while I reached the school in time it was difficult to find a proper entrance. After going to the office, I was directed to the kitchen and lunch room. There my training supervisor met me, guided me into a nice little room to change out of my outdoor shoes into my indoor ones, and out of my outdoor shirt into my cafeteria uniform shirt, and to put my things in a locker. (What I must also have along is the Rote Karte.) Besides I washed my hands, of course. It was snowing a trifle outside and the grassy areas and sidewalks were still covered. And there was still time before the food was to be served.
Then I learned the simpler tasks. Firstly we lifted the stainless steel, lidded bins out of the grey-blue styrofoam boxes, and checked the slip-tags to see that the right quantity of food had been delivered in them. (If it had been delivered to the wrong school, or there had been insufficient portions, we would have phoned the number given on the slips to correct the mistake.) Out in the lunch room a container each of tea and water, glasses, and cutlery had already been set up, and in the kitchen stacks of dishes with neat blue-and-white tea towels draped over them were awaiting use. At the window from which the food is served, there is a bain-marie, like a steel sink with at most an inch of water on the bottom, and my supervisor had switched on the heating underneath. Into this bain-marie we lowered the bins. Then, for the sake of food safety, we measured the temperature of one bin of each of the different foodstuffs with a thermometer much like the kind one uses at home for amateur medical purposes, and after the number stopped rising recorded it in a chart.
Eventually the business of serving food itself began. Since it's an elementary school, the children are for the most part friendly little characters, and as I ladled out tomato sauce and, every now and then rice with chickpea curry or the pasta with which the tomato sauce goes, I liked catching glimpses of their personalities. A couple said "danke," quite charmingly, and I was careful to recognize their effort to be polite by replying "bitte." As they grow older they'll probably find that most people aren't polite, besides which it's a bit presumptuous for me to dabble in pedagogy, but in the words of a certain Englishman, "How far that little candle throws his beams! So shines a good deed in a naughty world."
In the meantime I had to keep in mind that the littler ones receive more modest portions than the larger ones, and that when they ask for a second helping (which many did, because they love the noodles), this helping is slightly smaller; besides one must pay attention whether they want sauce, a little sauce, a dab of sauce to taste, or no sauce at all. For reasons of keeping demand within the limits of supply, neither third servings nor taking a portion of rice as well as of noodles are permitted. The supervisor already knew the preferences of the children and therefore had ordered a much larger proportion of noodles than rice; besides she handed out the apples to those children who weren't enrolled in day care and who wouldn't therefore be receiving them later. Surprisingly enough the children were quite enthusiastic about the apples, which did possess a pleasant rosy tinge; only one handed his back to me, and another wanted to exchange his because it was a little gnarled.
A third lady was busy in the dishwashing room, spraying off trays of dishes with a highly pressurized hose, and then setting it under the hob of a compact but impressive washing machine. The dirty dishes came in on trays set in wagons, and sometimes the children helped by pushing them into the kitchen, under the watchful eye of the lady so that they didn't roam loose. Out in the lunchroom the teachers wiped off the tables as their classes left. And the remaining business of cleaning was spared me, as I was sent off home right after the very last children had received at least their first portion.
So I'm a little anxious about the next two days, especially because I can be absentminded and forget things, and because when I'm under pressure instructions to me can go in one ear and out the other. But it seemed that today the only signs of abject stupidity were, firstly, not catching the name of my supervisor and, secondly, writing down my phone number incorrectly. Given the fact that I've thought of Proper Work with the same awed trepidation with which Frodo Baggins might have regarded the borders of Mordor, the last thing I expected was to have fun; I did, a lot.
***
It's also Papa's birthday!
This morning I went to my first day of work at the catering company. It isn't real work yet, but a three-day training and trial period. Unluckily I arrived after 11 a.m., because while I reached the school in time it was difficult to find a proper entrance. After going to the office, I was directed to the kitchen and lunch room. There my training supervisor met me, guided me into a nice little room to change out of my outdoor shoes into my indoor ones, and out of my outdoor shirt into my cafeteria uniform shirt, and to put my things in a locker. (What I must also have along is the Rote Karte.) Besides I washed my hands, of course. It was snowing a trifle outside and the grassy areas and sidewalks were still covered. And there was still time before the food was to be served.
Then I learned the simpler tasks. Firstly we lifted the stainless steel, lidded bins out of the grey-blue styrofoam boxes, and checked the slip-tags to see that the right quantity of food had been delivered in them. (If it had been delivered to the wrong school, or there had been insufficient portions, we would have phoned the number given on the slips to correct the mistake.) Out in the lunch room a container each of tea and water, glasses, and cutlery had already been set up, and in the kitchen stacks of dishes with neat blue-and-white tea towels draped over them were awaiting use. At the window from which the food is served, there is a bain-marie, like a steel sink with at most an inch of water on the bottom, and my supervisor had switched on the heating underneath. Into this bain-marie we lowered the bins. Then, for the sake of food safety, we measured the temperature of one bin of each of the different foodstuffs with a thermometer much like the kind one uses at home for amateur medical purposes, and after the number stopped rising recorded it in a chart.
Eventually the business of serving food itself began. Since it's an elementary school, the children are for the most part friendly little characters, and as I ladled out tomato sauce and, every now and then rice with chickpea curry or the pasta with which the tomato sauce goes, I liked catching glimpses of their personalities. A couple said "danke," quite charmingly, and I was careful to recognize their effort to be polite by replying "bitte." As they grow older they'll probably find that most people aren't polite, besides which it's a bit presumptuous for me to dabble in pedagogy, but in the words of a certain Englishman, "How far that little candle throws his beams! So shines a good deed in a naughty world."
In the meantime I had to keep in mind that the littler ones receive more modest portions than the larger ones, and that when they ask for a second helping (which many did, because they love the noodles), this helping is slightly smaller; besides one must pay attention whether they want sauce, a little sauce, a dab of sauce to taste, or no sauce at all. For reasons of keeping demand within the limits of supply, neither third servings nor taking a portion of rice as well as of noodles are permitted. The supervisor already knew the preferences of the children and therefore had ordered a much larger proportion of noodles than rice; besides she handed out the apples to those children who weren't enrolled in day care and who wouldn't therefore be receiving them later. Surprisingly enough the children were quite enthusiastic about the apples, which did possess a pleasant rosy tinge; only one handed his back to me, and another wanted to exchange his because it was a little gnarled.
A third lady was busy in the dishwashing room, spraying off trays of dishes with a highly pressurized hose, and then setting it under the hob of a compact but impressive washing machine. The dirty dishes came in on trays set in wagons, and sometimes the children helped by pushing them into the kitchen, under the watchful eye of the lady so that they didn't roam loose. Out in the lunchroom the teachers wiped off the tables as their classes left. And the remaining business of cleaning was spared me, as I was sent off home right after the very last children had received at least their first portion.
So I'm a little anxious about the next two days, especially because I can be absentminded and forget things, and because when I'm under pressure instructions to me can go in one ear and out the other. But it seemed that today the only signs of abject stupidity were, firstly, not catching the name of my supervisor and, secondly, writing down my phone number incorrectly. Given the fact that I've thought of Proper Work with the same awed trepidation with which Frodo Baggins might have regarded the borders of Mordor, the last thing I expected was to have fun; I did, a lot.
***
It's also Papa's birthday!
Sunday, January 17, 2010
From Bach to Stravinsky, Part I
[The criticisms of the violin students' playing are hopefully not mean but just calling it as I see it, though if I were one of them these calls probably still wouldn't make me happy. As for the YouTube clips, I only linked to ones from 20th century musicians because that's the compromise with my conscience for illegally watching copyrighted material.]
From the 11th to the 13th I attended three masterclasses with the violinist Ivry Gitlis, organized by the Hanns Eisler Hochschule für Musik and held in the Galakutschensaal II of the Marstall.
For the first day I came far too early, since the announced time of masterclasses was totally wrong. The flyers said 10 a.m. to 8 p.m., which was evidently implausible given the limits of human endurance, but the class actually started at 2:30. So I went for an idle stroll around the Lustgarten and colonnades at the Neues Museum and Bebelplatz, and visited the Schinkel-Museum in the Friedrichswerdersche Kirche again. It was cold and the snow was deep, white or cappucino-tinted or speckled with dark gravel like stracciatella ice cream. The Spree lay bare and black and it lapped quietly against the banks; here and there birds bobbed on its waters or idled on the expanses of snow on the land. Of course these places are customarily overrun by tourists, so their solemn and solitary aspect was especially compelling. There was a series of posters for the Carus exhibition at Alte Nationalgalerie, which among other things proved that the turn of the 18th/19th century was a halcyon era for pedantic blurbs. Altogether the walk was a nice old-fashioned experience.
As for the Marstall, the Musikschule's part of it is a grey stone façade that faces the Berliner Dom and the Altes Museum over the sprawling quadratic hole where the Palast der Republik used to be and where the Stadtschloss will be rebuilt. "Galakutschensaal" sounds grandiose in German, so the room itself was a minimalist let-down, the walls brick washed with terra cotta paint on two sides and covered in institutional-beige plastic bulges along the others. It is not on the ground level either, as the name suggests to me. The floor is a luminous golden parquet, however, and toward the courtyard it rises into a low stage that is seamlessly and unpretentiously integrated into the room as a whole. The ceiling is high and the light ample. On the stage there is a harpsichord and two Augustus Förster pianos, whose sound I found artificial and curiously flat, but I can only compare it to our grand piano and a legion of aged uprights which have stood me in good stead over the years.
In keeping with the egalitarian furnishings, Ivry Gitlis forewent the stage and took his seat at the front of the audience, where his violin (a light golden-brown instrument, but what really impressed me, perhaps because I am a bit of an idiot, is the fact that the violin case also contained four bows) joined him. Regarding the chin-prop vs. sponge question, he uses a sponge affixed to the underside of the violin by two elastics, tied together at the chin rest. While everyone was getting settled a woman was setting up a video camera to film everything.
From what I gathered the masterclasses were a proxy memoir on a small scale, or at least a forum for which Gitlis conscientiously gathered his experiences and thoughts, and in which he tried to record and transmit the really worthwhile ones for the benefit of the rest of us. He is eighty-seven years old now and on the last day it sounded very much as if he felt the gnawing of the tooth of time. On the other hand, even on the second and third days, when he was tired and his voice was more raspy and unfocused, he was sharp as a tack, unpretentious and congenial, and altogether a person one would want to invite over on a weekend evening and then listen to over a glass of whisky or a cigar or something, for hours. Of course he rambled but I liked it because it wasn't gratuitous and rather made one think.
As for the stretches where he played the violin himself, three things struck me particularly. Firstly, he wasn't afraid to play in an ugly way (muffled bow, different key, etc.) to demonstrate a point of technique; secondly, he was content to let the students play without trying to outshine them or frustratedly show them how it must be done; and thirdly he has a wonderful grasp of the nuances of the music whereas the students' playing, good as it was, proved a comparatively blank slate. (Altogether I expected Gitlis to be sardonic and strict, but he is polite, quite open-minded, and laidback.)
The programme began with a student from China, whose name sounded like Ji Jong (obviously I'm really not good at catching Chinese, Japanese, and Korean names, so I'll be making up most of those). She played from Bartók's Violin Concerto No. 2. Her approach was a trifle humourless and aggressive, suggesting a musical education spiritually akin to military training, and she spooled off the piece very ably but without pausing to form a phrase or bring out quirks in the music. On the piano the accompanist didn't play with much greater variety of interpretation; it appears as if it accompanists are denied the right to imagination, and though this one evidently didn't lack sensibility her playing didn't express much. Otherwise Ji Jong played remarkably well; her tone was warm, a little dark, and interestingly shaded; and it was no task to listen as she held one's interest throughout.
After words of general praise, Gitlis remarked that her playing was "very healthy. . . . Perhaps too healthy," and then began in his conversational manner to investigate the possibilities for improvement. He asked her to tell a story, which after some hesitation and — with unexpected humour given her otherwise stony demeanour — she did. (The story: A man tells someone that he believes he's seen his face before; the other replies that it's highly doubtful since his head has never left his shoulders.) Then Gitlis explained that when we tell a story we don't just bluntly state events; we alter our voice, fill in details, and vary the pace at which we speak. He then played part of the beginning and did give it a conversational and Hungarian air, explaining how the composition is influenced by the speech rhythms of Magyar. Speaking of the advisability of stretching the rhythm from time to time, he stressed (to paraphrase) "One can be in time or one can be on time; there's a difference." It lends a sense of anticipation and heightens the tension. He also recounted what Marian Anderson had told him, "one of the most important things in music is the fraction of a second before."
[YouTube: 1. Georg Kulenkampff, Violin Concerto in D major by Piotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky; written in 1878, rec. 1939
(There are of course many versions available, but I decided to pick this one, whose interpreter incidentally once lived and taught in Berlin.)]
Then a tall French student, Simon, played the opening movement of Tchaikovsky's famous violin concerto. I found his rendition very touching and unaffected (not to mention that I have a very weak spot for the music itself). On the other hand the thought crossed my mind, and it returned on the third day, that the playing sounded as if he had heard and was beautifully recreating a fine recording of it. Perhaps it was so frictionlessly perfect that it felt like a facsimile of genuineness rather than the thing itself. At any rate Gitlis, who seemed impatient for reasons I didn't understand, asked Simon why he plays music; it transpired that the student grew up in a musical family, but other than that there was no direct answer. So Gitlis asked whether he did not feel at times that music is like wandering at the edge of a precipice. He also inquired whether Simon was playing in a competition, which was however not the case; he recalled the time when he went to Budapest and heard a student who played with a great deal of fire, only to return a year or so later to find that this fire was quite extinguished, and upon querying what the reason for this change might be, he was told, "I'm preparing for a competition." The crux of the criticism was: take risks!
[In other recordings, I love Henryk Szeryng's take among other things for its relative lightness and his tone, and Arthur Grumiaux's take for the tone and its strength.]
The third student was Japanese and since his name may have started with "T" he will be known as Toshi. He played the Fuga from Bach's Sonata No. 1. His approach was in my view too North American: the rhythm was exaggerated like in pop music and he played with some self-conscious panache. But given the circumstances it sounded surprisingly unmodern and was evidently Bach; and in his hands even the harsh chords had a sonority that lent human warmth to a piece that is in my opinion timidly and then acutely woebegone, like a sparrow vainly scratching for nourishment beneath friendless drifts of frozen snow. Gitlis, on the other hand, was all for a bit of scraping, and he got Toshi to use the bow sparingly instead of drawing it along its length. Altogether he often encouraged the economic use of the bow — though as far as I can tell economy of movement is something that naturally transpires over decades and is therefore mainly noticeable in the most seasoned musicians — and imaginative bow division so that a phrase of music doesn't sound monotonous and identical with every repetition.
*
After that Tristan took the stage, and with him a second accompanist, Dana. The latter is an amusingly temperamental personality, dressed and coiffed in the style of the 50s or so, with distinct cheekbones and a habit of energetically pursing her mouth. Tristan is French, stalwart in build and not entirely at ease, and as he played Niccolò Paganini's "Campanella" he moved a great deal and struck grave poses like a turn-of-the-century actor. This energetic presence evidently distracted him from the music, which while vigorous was comparatively expressionless. Ivry Gitlis clearly thought something similar, and said that it is not necessary to move much or to announce one's presence insistently. What I noticed was that Tristan's tone had at times a peculiar clear and steely quality. Besides he played something else by Paganini, a caprice or étude, without there being much time to discuss it, but which at least demonstrated that he has obediently put himself through the technical paces . . .
[YouTube: 1. Christian Ferras, excerpt from Stravinsky Violin Concerto in D major, written 1931]
Finally there was Susanne, who seems to be German and in character diffidently nice, and she played Stravinsky's violin concerto. Said composer may have been in a Bartokesque mood when writing the concerto, because once the movements have started out with a discordant, unsubtly attention-seeking(?) bray of a chord, they wander into strains of unadorned folkish melody whilst the piano accompaniment (or, I guess, orchestra) plonks along arbitrarily. Much of modern music falls, in my opinion, into two categories: it sounds like an orchestra tuning, or it sounds like a potpourri of uninteresting and purely functional phrases lifted from the aimless stretches in a composition by Bach, Mozart, or Beethoven, or both. Even given these prejudices, however, it was no hardship to listen to the Stravinsky in its entirety. The problem was that the violinist was nervous, since she had arrived at pretty much the last moment, so her playing was (presumably) note-perfect but colourless and flustered. On the second day, however . . .
From the 11th to the 13th I attended three masterclasses with the violinist Ivry Gitlis, organized by the Hanns Eisler Hochschule für Musik and held in the Galakutschensaal II of the Marstall.
For the first day I came far too early, since the announced time of masterclasses was totally wrong. The flyers said 10 a.m. to 8 p.m., which was evidently implausible given the limits of human endurance, but the class actually started at 2:30. So I went for an idle stroll around the Lustgarten and colonnades at the Neues Museum and Bebelplatz, and visited the Schinkel-Museum in the Friedrichswerdersche Kirche again. It was cold and the snow was deep, white or cappucino-tinted or speckled with dark gravel like stracciatella ice cream. The Spree lay bare and black and it lapped quietly against the banks; here and there birds bobbed on its waters or idled on the expanses of snow on the land. Of course these places are customarily overrun by tourists, so their solemn and solitary aspect was especially compelling. There was a series of posters for the Carus exhibition at Alte Nationalgalerie, which among other things proved that the turn of the 18th/19th century was a halcyon era for pedantic blurbs. Altogether the walk was a nice old-fashioned experience.
As for the Marstall, the Musikschule's part of it is a grey stone façade that faces the Berliner Dom and the Altes Museum over the sprawling quadratic hole where the Palast der Republik used to be and where the Stadtschloss will be rebuilt. "Galakutschensaal" sounds grandiose in German, so the room itself was a minimalist let-down, the walls brick washed with terra cotta paint on two sides and covered in institutional-beige plastic bulges along the others. It is not on the ground level either, as the name suggests to me. The floor is a luminous golden parquet, however, and toward the courtyard it rises into a low stage that is seamlessly and unpretentiously integrated into the room as a whole. The ceiling is high and the light ample. On the stage there is a harpsichord and two Augustus Förster pianos, whose sound I found artificial and curiously flat, but I can only compare it to our grand piano and a legion of aged uprights which have stood me in good stead over the years.
In keeping with the egalitarian furnishings, Ivry Gitlis forewent the stage and took his seat at the front of the audience, where his violin (a light golden-brown instrument, but what really impressed me, perhaps because I am a bit of an idiot, is the fact that the violin case also contained four bows) joined him. Regarding the chin-prop vs. sponge question, he uses a sponge affixed to the underside of the violin by two elastics, tied together at the chin rest. While everyone was getting settled a woman was setting up a video camera to film everything.
From what I gathered the masterclasses were a proxy memoir on a small scale, or at least a forum for which Gitlis conscientiously gathered his experiences and thoughts, and in which he tried to record and transmit the really worthwhile ones for the benefit of the rest of us. He is eighty-seven years old now and on the last day it sounded very much as if he felt the gnawing of the tooth of time. On the other hand, even on the second and third days, when he was tired and his voice was more raspy and unfocused, he was sharp as a tack, unpretentious and congenial, and altogether a person one would want to invite over on a weekend evening and then listen to over a glass of whisky or a cigar or something, for hours. Of course he rambled but I liked it because it wasn't gratuitous and rather made one think.
As for the stretches where he played the violin himself, three things struck me particularly. Firstly, he wasn't afraid to play in an ugly way (muffled bow, different key, etc.) to demonstrate a point of technique; secondly, he was content to let the students play without trying to outshine them or frustratedly show them how it must be done; and thirdly he has a wonderful grasp of the nuances of the music whereas the students' playing, good as it was, proved a comparatively blank slate. (Altogether I expected Gitlis to be sardonic and strict, but he is polite, quite open-minded, and laidback.)
The programme began with a student from China, whose name sounded like Ji Jong (obviously I'm really not good at catching Chinese, Japanese, and Korean names, so I'll be making up most of those). She played from Bartók's Violin Concerto No. 2. Her approach was a trifle humourless and aggressive, suggesting a musical education spiritually akin to military training, and she spooled off the piece very ably but without pausing to form a phrase or bring out quirks in the music. On the piano the accompanist didn't play with much greater variety of interpretation; it appears as if it accompanists are denied the right to imagination, and though this one evidently didn't lack sensibility her playing didn't express much. Otherwise Ji Jong played remarkably well; her tone was warm, a little dark, and interestingly shaded; and it was no task to listen as she held one's interest throughout.
After words of general praise, Gitlis remarked that her playing was "very healthy. . . . Perhaps too healthy," and then began in his conversational manner to investigate the possibilities for improvement. He asked her to tell a story, which after some hesitation and — with unexpected humour given her otherwise stony demeanour — she did. (The story: A man tells someone that he believes he's seen his face before; the other replies that it's highly doubtful since his head has never left his shoulders.) Then Gitlis explained that when we tell a story we don't just bluntly state events; we alter our voice, fill in details, and vary the pace at which we speak. He then played part of the beginning and did give it a conversational and Hungarian air, explaining how the composition is influenced by the speech rhythms of Magyar. Speaking of the advisability of stretching the rhythm from time to time, he stressed (to paraphrase) "One can be in time or one can be on time; there's a difference." It lends a sense of anticipation and heightens the tension. He also recounted what Marian Anderson had told him, "one of the most important things in music is the fraction of a second before."
[YouTube: 1. Georg Kulenkampff, Violin Concerto in D major by Piotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky; written in 1878, rec. 1939
(There are of course many versions available, but I decided to pick this one, whose interpreter incidentally once lived and taught in Berlin.)]
Then a tall French student, Simon, played the opening movement of Tchaikovsky's famous violin concerto. I found his rendition very touching and unaffected (not to mention that I have a very weak spot for the music itself). On the other hand the thought crossed my mind, and it returned on the third day, that the playing sounded as if he had heard and was beautifully recreating a fine recording of it. Perhaps it was so frictionlessly perfect that it felt like a facsimile of genuineness rather than the thing itself. At any rate Gitlis, who seemed impatient for reasons I didn't understand, asked Simon why he plays music; it transpired that the student grew up in a musical family, but other than that there was no direct answer. So Gitlis asked whether he did not feel at times that music is like wandering at the edge of a precipice. He also inquired whether Simon was playing in a competition, which was however not the case; he recalled the time when he went to Budapest and heard a student who played with a great deal of fire, only to return a year or so later to find that this fire was quite extinguished, and upon querying what the reason for this change might be, he was told, "I'm preparing for a competition." The crux of the criticism was: take risks!
[In other recordings, I love Henryk Szeryng's take among other things for its relative lightness and his tone, and Arthur Grumiaux's take for the tone and its strength.]
The third student was Japanese and since his name may have started with "T" he will be known as Toshi. He played the Fuga from Bach's Sonata No. 1. His approach was in my view too North American: the rhythm was exaggerated like in pop music and he played with some self-conscious panache. But given the circumstances it sounded surprisingly unmodern and was evidently Bach; and in his hands even the harsh chords had a sonority that lent human warmth to a piece that is in my opinion timidly and then acutely woebegone, like a sparrow vainly scratching for nourishment beneath friendless drifts of frozen snow. Gitlis, on the other hand, was all for a bit of scraping, and he got Toshi to use the bow sparingly instead of drawing it along its length. Altogether he often encouraged the economic use of the bow — though as far as I can tell economy of movement is something that naturally transpires over decades and is therefore mainly noticeable in the most seasoned musicians — and imaginative bow division so that a phrase of music doesn't sound monotonous and identical with every repetition.
*
After that Tristan took the stage, and with him a second accompanist, Dana. The latter is an amusingly temperamental personality, dressed and coiffed in the style of the 50s or so, with distinct cheekbones and a habit of energetically pursing her mouth. Tristan is French, stalwart in build and not entirely at ease, and as he played Niccolò Paganini's "Campanella" he moved a great deal and struck grave poses like a turn-of-the-century actor. This energetic presence evidently distracted him from the music, which while vigorous was comparatively expressionless. Ivry Gitlis clearly thought something similar, and said that it is not necessary to move much or to announce one's presence insistently. What I noticed was that Tristan's tone had at times a peculiar clear and steely quality. Besides he played something else by Paganini, a caprice or étude, without there being much time to discuss it, but which at least demonstrated that he has obediently put himself through the technical paces . . .
[YouTube: 1. Christian Ferras, excerpt from Stravinsky Violin Concerto in D major, written 1931]
Finally there was Susanne, who seems to be German and in character diffidently nice, and she played Stravinsky's violin concerto. Said composer may have been in a Bartokesque mood when writing the concerto, because once the movements have started out with a discordant, unsubtly attention-seeking(?) bray of a chord, they wander into strains of unadorned folkish melody whilst the piano accompaniment (or, I guess, orchestra) plonks along arbitrarily. Much of modern music falls, in my opinion, into two categories: it sounds like an orchestra tuning, or it sounds like a potpourri of uninteresting and purely functional phrases lifted from the aimless stretches in a composition by Bach, Mozart, or Beethoven, or both. Even given these prejudices, however, it was no hardship to listen to the Stravinsky in its entirety. The problem was that the violinist was nervous, since she had arrived at pretty much the last moment, so her playing was (presumably) note-perfect but colourless and flustered. On the second day, however . . .
Saturday, January 16, 2010
From Bach to Stravinsky, Part II
On the second day Susanne repeated the Stravinsky and this time played it with varied expression and good phrasing. Gitlis was much impressed by her progress since the day before and said so. Susanne's tone was, by the way, full, and either the key was low or it seemed low, so that it sounded like a viola but in a good way. Again the advice was to use the bow more sparingly and leave time for the music to develop; he added that she should trust in her good musical abilities and feel free to go further and enjoy herself. Dana was the accompanist again, and Gitlis, who evidently found her personality striking and amusing too, remarked admiringly that she (to paraphrase) "gives better direction than many conductors."
[YouTube: 1. Yehudi Menuhin, "La Campanella" by Niccolò Paganini, written 1826 and rec. 1930]
Tristan likewise repeated the "Campanella." This time Gitlis used the analogy of dancing to demonstrate that a singlemindedly driven approach, and lack of sensitivity to rhythm, is not ideal for the music. Then he went on to defend Paganini as a musician, especially because the Italian was such an important figure in the history of music and did in very truth divide it into a before and after. While the composer is not Bach — whom Gitlis obviously venerates as a creator of music in its profoundest sense — his music is still nice music and funny music, and in works like the "Campanella" "there are jewels every second" which it is worthwhile to seek out. Then there was a lengthy discussion of technique, in which Gitlis went over the passages with skittering mordents which Tristan seems to have been phrasing inaccurately, and emphasized (as I paraphrased it in my notes) that, "not only each arm but the divers components (fingers, wrist, etc. up to shoulder) should also be independent." And, returning to more abstract questions, he repeated that there is (to quote my notes again) "no need to be too blatant," that one should "suggest rather than say outright."
After that a Korean girl, who will be named Hu Jeong, performed Brahms's violin concerto. She is relatively tiny, so she has to lower the neck of the instrument and slightly bow over it as Mischa Elman did; besides her hair was in a neat pixie cut and she had the endearing habit of hiding her face a little behind the base of her violin as she awaited criticism. But despite her diminutive size, she tackled the technical demands of the concerto very competently. It felt as if the tempo of the violin were constantly lagging behind, but I've since discovered that effect is common in recordings of the work. What also bothered me is that it was one of those times where a public performance sounds like a solo practice session; it felt rehearsed.
During the discussion of her performance the question of nervousness came up. Ivry Gitlis told us an anecdote about Sarah Bernhardt: backstage at a performance she met a young colleague, who asserted that she wasn't at all nervous, whereupon the great actress (crushingly) replied that she would be once she had talent. Then the masterclass turned to technical points again, and Gitlis tried to get Hu Jeong to shift her whole arm and not just her finger in anticipation of lower (or higher) notes. It was also rather amusing when he remarked parenthetically that he envied violinists with strong fourth fingers; he explained that for him the fourth finger is a little "verstuzt" — then he paused, laughed and said, "I have no idea what that means, but it sounds good." (The masterclasses were mostly in English, but some German and French, maybe a little Hebrew, and a Russian saying, were thrown in.) And after that there was a touching moment, where Gitlis was going over a simple and gentler phrase in the concerto, and was all of a sudden very moved by its beauty. He took a while to collect himself, and then asked the student to play the music again, and as she did so stood on the stage with her and looked her in the eye so that there was a very nice unspoken exchange, as she rendered it once again, with feeling.
[YouTube: 1. Ginette Neveu, Violin Concerto in D major by Johannes Brahms, written 1878
(There are plenty of good recordings, so I took this one at random.)]
After that a fellow Korean, Ha Lim, played the Poème Elégiaque by Ysaÿe. Here I felt that the criticism of "too healthy" really applied. As far as I could tell the piece required a clear and cooler and perhaps mournful tone, tinged with cynicism, whereas she played it quite naïvely and with a gentle and cushioned tone (which may also have been caused by nervousness, since her tone on the following day was clearer). Her accompanist — Nao, from Japan — was, I felt, quite good, playing with appropriate lyricism and bravely eschewing the Music Student's Mezzoforte. It might be partly flattery but Gitlis, when told that the student would be having a different accompanist the next day, asked why one would change accompanists when this one was doing such a fine job. (The reason was logistical.)
In answer to a question of Ha Lim's he spoke reassuringly about her tendency to use a large vibrato, which her latest teacher had apparently trained out of her; basically his philosophy is that, if it really feels right to you in a particular situation, do it. (I think the teacher's problem with her vibrato may be the modern love for "what you see is what you get" playing without adornment or romantic wallowings. To me that's one-dimensional and, in its exclusion of a worthy though aged musical tradition, no more reasonable than demanding that women never wear skirts or dresses, only pants, to suit the trend.)
Then he made a remark which I found really insightful, which is that performers often adopt a persona when performing, and that we always or often strain to be something more or other than we are. Perhaps we should accept what is and just try to be ourselves. In that context Ivry Gitlis told an anecdote of a concert which he gave in South Africa. It was the middle of winter in the hemisphere, the weather was squalid, and the highly straitlaced audience looked moribund and mummified. Evidently nobody was enthusiastic about being there. During Paganini's Concerto in D Gitlis's fingers stumbled over themselves — a minor disaster — but that brought about the realization that he could just try to enjoy it. So after that the concert improved for him, and it improved for the audience, which became one of his best ever.
The fifth and last student of the day was Ji Jong, who repeated the Bartók (and due to time constraints never had the opportunity to play the Saint-Saëns piece she had also prepared). In my notes Gitlis's commentary is summarized as "take risks — reflected risks."
[YouTube: 1. Yehudi Menuhin, "La Campanella" by Niccolò Paganini, written 1826 and rec. 1930]
Tristan likewise repeated the "Campanella." This time Gitlis used the analogy of dancing to demonstrate that a singlemindedly driven approach, and lack of sensitivity to rhythm, is not ideal for the music. Then he went on to defend Paganini as a musician, especially because the Italian was such an important figure in the history of music and did in very truth divide it into a before and after. While the composer is not Bach — whom Gitlis obviously venerates as a creator of music in its profoundest sense — his music is still nice music and funny music, and in works like the "Campanella" "there are jewels every second" which it is worthwhile to seek out. Then there was a lengthy discussion of technique, in which Gitlis went over the passages with skittering mordents which Tristan seems to have been phrasing inaccurately, and emphasized (as I paraphrased it in my notes) that, "not only each arm but the divers components (fingers, wrist, etc. up to shoulder) should also be independent." And, returning to more abstract questions, he repeated that there is (to quote my notes again) "no need to be too blatant," that one should "suggest rather than say outright."
After that a Korean girl, who will be named Hu Jeong, performed Brahms's violin concerto. She is relatively tiny, so she has to lower the neck of the instrument and slightly bow over it as Mischa Elman did; besides her hair was in a neat pixie cut and she had the endearing habit of hiding her face a little behind the base of her violin as she awaited criticism. But despite her diminutive size, she tackled the technical demands of the concerto very competently. It felt as if the tempo of the violin were constantly lagging behind, but I've since discovered that effect is common in recordings of the work. What also bothered me is that it was one of those times where a public performance sounds like a solo practice session; it felt rehearsed.
During the discussion of her performance the question of nervousness came up. Ivry Gitlis told us an anecdote about Sarah Bernhardt: backstage at a performance she met a young colleague, who asserted that she wasn't at all nervous, whereupon the great actress (crushingly) replied that she would be once she had talent. Then the masterclass turned to technical points again, and Gitlis tried to get Hu Jeong to shift her whole arm and not just her finger in anticipation of lower (or higher) notes. It was also rather amusing when he remarked parenthetically that he envied violinists with strong fourth fingers; he explained that for him the fourth finger is a little "verstuzt" — then he paused, laughed and said, "I have no idea what that means, but it sounds good." (The masterclasses were mostly in English, but some German and French, maybe a little Hebrew, and a Russian saying, were thrown in.) And after that there was a touching moment, where Gitlis was going over a simple and gentler phrase in the concerto, and was all of a sudden very moved by its beauty. He took a while to collect himself, and then asked the student to play the music again, and as she did so stood on the stage with her and looked her in the eye so that there was a very nice unspoken exchange, as she rendered it once again, with feeling.
[YouTube: 1. Ginette Neveu, Violin Concerto in D major by Johannes Brahms, written 1878
(There are plenty of good recordings, so I took this one at random.)]
After that a fellow Korean, Ha Lim, played the Poème Elégiaque by Ysaÿe. Here I felt that the criticism of "too healthy" really applied. As far as I could tell the piece required a clear and cooler and perhaps mournful tone, tinged with cynicism, whereas she played it quite naïvely and with a gentle and cushioned tone (which may also have been caused by nervousness, since her tone on the following day was clearer). Her accompanist — Nao, from Japan — was, I felt, quite good, playing with appropriate lyricism and bravely eschewing the Music Student's Mezzoforte. It might be partly flattery but Gitlis, when told that the student would be having a different accompanist the next day, asked why one would change accompanists when this one was doing such a fine job. (The reason was logistical.)
In answer to a question of Ha Lim's he spoke reassuringly about her tendency to use a large vibrato, which her latest teacher had apparently trained out of her; basically his philosophy is that, if it really feels right to you in a particular situation, do it. (I think the teacher's problem with her vibrato may be the modern love for "what you see is what you get" playing without adornment or romantic wallowings. To me that's one-dimensional and, in its exclusion of a worthy though aged musical tradition, no more reasonable than demanding that women never wear skirts or dresses, only pants, to suit the trend.)
Then he made a remark which I found really insightful, which is that performers often adopt a persona when performing, and that we always or often strain to be something more or other than we are. Perhaps we should accept what is and just try to be ourselves. In that context Ivry Gitlis told an anecdote of a concert which he gave in South Africa. It was the middle of winter in the hemisphere, the weather was squalid, and the highly straitlaced audience looked moribund and mummified. Evidently nobody was enthusiastic about being there. During Paganini's Concerto in D Gitlis's fingers stumbled over themselves — a minor disaster — but that brought about the realization that he could just try to enjoy it. So after that the concert improved for him, and it improved for the audience, which became one of his best ever.
The fifth and last student of the day was Ji Jong, who repeated the Bartók (and due to time constraints never had the opportunity to play the Saint-Saëns piece she had also prepared). In my notes Gitlis's commentary is summarized as "take risks — reflected risks."
From Bach to Stravinsky, Part III
Ayumi, from Korea but onetime resident of the States, began the third day with Pablo Sarasate's Carmen Fantasy. It put and puts me into a grouch. Its putative Spanishness may not be an assault but is certainly a blunt weapon, since countless composers are infinitely better at capturing the fine peculiarities and distinctions and ambiguities of folk music. Before it was mentioned that Sarasate composed it I had pegged it as a clumsy imitation of his country's folklore by a city-dwelling Gaul or Teuton. It's like watching Disney's Hunchback of Notre Dame for insights into gypsy culture. But, firstly, I suppose it's one of those pieces one must perform with wry flair, and then it sounds intelligent; secondly, I'm exaggerating; and thirdly even Beethoven was terribly off if he truly thought that his "Ecossaises" are remotely Scottish . . .
My grouch extended to the student, who basked in the smug and showy pretend-drama of the music, and was so satisfied by her own virtuosic prowess that she didn't seem to strive for anything nobler or to absorb the criticism particularly well. Which is human. But in my view a crucial part of being and growing as a musician is to work against character flaws that negatively affect performance, like vanity or unseriousness. These feelings can be merely distracting or outright poison, and must be dealt with sternly. (I suspect that some teachers are sadistically critical for that very reason, but I don't like this "remedy" for obvious reasons, and in my case such approaches, far from being helpful, transform me into a gibbering idiot.)
Anyway, Gitlis discussed inspiration and eventually got around to oblique criticisms. One of my notes was "crépuscule between contrasts," which interpreted means that there should be a gentle and gradual transition from piano to forte, for instance, just as day and night don't just change into each other at the flick of a switch but fade into each other, subtly. From there he went on to discuss feeling in music. He remarked, a little flippantly, that it's far better to have a tear in one's eye than to go about with eyes that are invariably dry. In an argument which anyone who has watched The Art of Violin will recognize, Gitlis addressed the the frequent criticism that Heifetz is "cold," saying that while he did not express much emotion outwardly, if one listens to what he actually played it is (in Gitlis's words) "pregnant with intensity and warmth." He also emphasized that suffering should not be necessary, and to illustrate its pointless extreme he spoke of Joseph Hassid, whom he seems to have known personally when they were children.
Returning to Ayumi's playing, he suggested a slighter approach; "if anything, don't play it so much" and instead "let it play you somehow." He went on to say that she should play as she would like to hear the music as opposed to how she thinks it should be played, and to "imagine it more" and experiment. In similar vein he observed that it's best to let the audience metaphorically search for you when you appear on the stage and begin to play, rather than to baldly declare your presence at once. Then — and I don't know if he was being sarcastic or not — Gitlis remarked of the Fantasy, "I never played this piece. I never played it because I like it too much." Finally he addressed technique and pointed out that her left arm was overly tense — I think that she tended to put too much pressure on the strings with the bow arm, which is bad not only for the tone, I think, but also for her joints and muscles — and that it's advisable to profit by the natural weight of the arm. (This was an extension of his attempts on the previous day to coax the students into relaxing enough to achieve a rubbery, limp arm, which is surprisingly difficult.)
***
[YouTube: 1. Jascha Heifetz, Carmen Fantasy by Pablo de Sarasate, rec. 1924
(In my humble opinion, the most endurable rendition: mercifully if preternaturally swift, dry but not at all mechanical, and pleasantly quirky.)
2. Efrem Zimbalist, ditto
(This loyally interpreted version is, I suspect, close to what Sarasate had in mind.)
*
1. Jascha Heifetz, 1st Mvt. Scottish Fantasy in E flat major by Max Bruch, written 1879-80]
***
Then Ha Lim took the stage to perform Bruch's Scottish Fantasy (which is incidentally dedicated to Sarasate and therefore a pleasing scrap of dramatic continuity in the masterclass). I had forgotten what it was and therefore racked my brains to figure out the composer, only concluding that it was purest Mendelssohn in stretches but overall not Mendelssohn at all, until enlightenment transpired. When the piece ended Ivry Gitlis began describing the view outside the windows of the Galakutschensaal as darkness fell, and when I and probably most of the audience was thoroughly bewildered, he stopped talking altogether. This time I'm pretty certain he enjoyed leading us along a woodpath, and then he proved that it was no woodpath at all by ending the pause to explain that it was oddly quiet considering that we were in the middle of the city. And, in a hushed voice, he asked the violinist to play again, to keep this quiet in mind and build the music on it. The result was great; to reduce it to mechanics, at least for that space of time the student evidently grasped what Gitlis had been saying about not forcing the music, taking one's time, and phrasing.
After this interlude of pedagogical mysticism it was a bit of a letdown to return to questions of posture — this time relaxing one's shoulders — but variety is after all the spice of life. And then Ha Lim's session was done and Simon reprised his rendition of the first movement of Tchaikovsky's violin concerto. Gitlis tried to get him to scrape with the bow a little, hinted that a touch of humour would not come amiss, remarked, "You play almost too well; I would like you to have a little accident from time to time," and wound up with the advice, "Don't be afraid to be afraid."
And then, before the masterclass series was conclusively over, Ivry Gitlis addressed us again. Though what he says doesn't come to mind now, for one thing he declared himself readily willing to return to the Musikschule to give another masterclass. And when the subject turned to general wisdom I think he repeated this message, "Don't be afraid to be afraid." It sounds to me like a warning against mindless conformity and excessive timidity, not only in the performance of music but also in our private and public lives altogether. And I think that it ties in with his overall approach to the masterclass, in which he tries to point out that beyond the prescribed routine and daily slog of music training there lie the profoundly individual qualities and work — experimentation and reflection, intelligence and feeling, etc. — which elevate a good musician to a great one.
My grouch extended to the student, who basked in the smug and showy pretend-drama of the music, and was so satisfied by her own virtuosic prowess that she didn't seem to strive for anything nobler or to absorb the criticism particularly well. Which is human. But in my view a crucial part of being and growing as a musician is to work against character flaws that negatively affect performance, like vanity or unseriousness. These feelings can be merely distracting or outright poison, and must be dealt with sternly. (I suspect that some teachers are sadistically critical for that very reason, but I don't like this "remedy" for obvious reasons, and in my case such approaches, far from being helpful, transform me into a gibbering idiot.)
Anyway, Gitlis discussed inspiration and eventually got around to oblique criticisms. One of my notes was "crépuscule between contrasts," which interpreted means that there should be a gentle and gradual transition from piano to forte, for instance, just as day and night don't just change into each other at the flick of a switch but fade into each other, subtly. From there he went on to discuss feeling in music. He remarked, a little flippantly, that it's far better to have a tear in one's eye than to go about with eyes that are invariably dry. In an argument which anyone who has watched The Art of Violin will recognize, Gitlis addressed the the frequent criticism that Heifetz is "cold," saying that while he did not express much emotion outwardly, if one listens to what he actually played it is (in Gitlis's words) "pregnant with intensity and warmth." He also emphasized that suffering should not be necessary, and to illustrate its pointless extreme he spoke of Joseph Hassid, whom he seems to have known personally when they were children.
Returning to Ayumi's playing, he suggested a slighter approach; "if anything, don't play it so much" and instead "let it play you somehow." He went on to say that she should play as she would like to hear the music as opposed to how she thinks it should be played, and to "imagine it more" and experiment. In similar vein he observed that it's best to let the audience metaphorically search for you when you appear on the stage and begin to play, rather than to baldly declare your presence at once. Then — and I don't know if he was being sarcastic or not — Gitlis remarked of the Fantasy, "I never played this piece. I never played it because I like it too much." Finally he addressed technique and pointed out that her left arm was overly tense — I think that she tended to put too much pressure on the strings with the bow arm, which is bad not only for the tone, I think, but also for her joints and muscles — and that it's advisable to profit by the natural weight of the arm. (This was an extension of his attempts on the previous day to coax the students into relaxing enough to achieve a rubbery, limp arm, which is surprisingly difficult.)
***
[YouTube: 1. Jascha Heifetz, Carmen Fantasy by Pablo de Sarasate, rec. 1924
(In my humble opinion, the most endurable rendition: mercifully if preternaturally swift, dry but not at all mechanical, and pleasantly quirky.)
2. Efrem Zimbalist, ditto
(This loyally interpreted version is, I suspect, close to what Sarasate had in mind.)
*
1. Jascha Heifetz, 1st Mvt. Scottish Fantasy in E flat major by Max Bruch, written 1879-80]
***
Then Ha Lim took the stage to perform Bruch's Scottish Fantasy (which is incidentally dedicated to Sarasate and therefore a pleasing scrap of dramatic continuity in the masterclass). I had forgotten what it was and therefore racked my brains to figure out the composer, only concluding that it was purest Mendelssohn in stretches but overall not Mendelssohn at all, until enlightenment transpired. When the piece ended Ivry Gitlis began describing the view outside the windows of the Galakutschensaal as darkness fell, and when I and probably most of the audience was thoroughly bewildered, he stopped talking altogether. This time I'm pretty certain he enjoyed leading us along a woodpath, and then he proved that it was no woodpath at all by ending the pause to explain that it was oddly quiet considering that we were in the middle of the city. And, in a hushed voice, he asked the violinist to play again, to keep this quiet in mind and build the music on it. The result was great; to reduce it to mechanics, at least for that space of time the student evidently grasped what Gitlis had been saying about not forcing the music, taking one's time, and phrasing.
After this interlude of pedagogical mysticism it was a bit of a letdown to return to questions of posture — this time relaxing one's shoulders — but variety is after all the spice of life. And then Ha Lim's session was done and Simon reprised his rendition of the first movement of Tchaikovsky's violin concerto. Gitlis tried to get him to scrape with the bow a little, hinted that a touch of humour would not come amiss, remarked, "You play almost too well; I would like you to have a little accident from time to time," and wound up with the advice, "Don't be afraid to be afraid."
And then, before the masterclass series was conclusively over, Ivry Gitlis addressed us again. Though what he says doesn't come to mind now, for one thing he declared himself readily willing to return to the Musikschule to give another masterclass. And when the subject turned to general wisdom I think he repeated this message, "Don't be afraid to be afraid." It sounds to me like a warning against mindless conformity and excessive timidity, not only in the performance of music but also in our private and public lives altogether. And I think that it ties in with his overall approach to the masterclass, in which he tries to point out that beyond the prescribed routine and daily slog of music training there lie the profoundly individual qualities and work — experimentation and reflection, intelligence and feeling, etc. — which elevate a good musician to a great one.
Friday, January 08, 2010
Straightening Up and Flying Right
On Wednesday I took the grand step of taking the U-Bahn to Fehrbelliner Platz and there obtaining my Red Card (Rote Karte or Gesundheitspass or Belehrung gemäß [squiggly s] 34 des Infektionsschutzgesetzes, if I remember the jargon properly), which is not a Communist Party membership but a health pass which clears me for work in the food service industry. What it requires is paying 14 Euros and then sitting through a ca. 18 minute informational video about food safety and then a short lecture on the same subject by a person from the municipal health authority, with a group of 12 or so others. At the end of it we were handed the Rote Karte and sent on our merry way. The point of the exercise is that I've been thinking of following Mama's and T.'s footsteps by dishwashing at schools for an organic catering service.I am still summoning the courage to apply, but should have done so within the following month. After having obtained the pass, which followed a sleepless night and the beginnings of a cold, I slept for some twenty-four hours with a two-hour interruption, by the way; I am prouder of the second feat than the first, probably also because the first requires additional action. Other than that life has not been that exciting, though I did print out a free score of Liszt's Liebestraum No. 3 from the internet and have been learning that for about a week. (Thereby checking off one more, reasonably nice warhorse of the piano repertoire.)
Saturday, January 02, 2010
Bach Prelude in D Minor
This is one of Ge.'s old pieces, and one that he played pretty much every day on our piano, though in c minor if I remember correctly. It works quite well on the guitar too, as demonstrated by Andrés Segovia (whose films on YouTube are generally worth browsing) in this clip.
Friday, January 01, 2010
Bumblebees and Firecrackers
After a highly satisfactory Eve I went to sleep presumably before 3 a.m. and finally woke up again when the New Year's Concert of the Vienna Philharmonic began on television, directed by Georges Prêtre. This time I'm too lazy to fact-check the details so half of the following may be invented.
The first part of the concert was "played straight" where the artistic direction was concerned, so we just saw the orchestra and audience and interior of the Wiener Musikverein, and no theatrics or splashy landscapery. Amongst the gimmickry this year there were instruments that mimicked the cuckoo and the duck; and though once a wooden block was used to impersonate the popping of a champagne cork, the second time there was even a special apparatus that, as far as one could tell given the rapid cuts between the camera angles, could spit out a cork as sonorously as the traditional bottle. The audience included the Austrian president Heinz Fischer with spouse (didn't know of or recognize him; the ORF narrator pointed him out), Roger Moore, kimono'd Japanese ladies, and someone who looked suspiciously like our dear finance minister Wolfgang Schäuble.
As for the floral decorations, I approved of them this year: yellow and orange and white roses, red anthuriums (they could have been uglier), ranunculus that was reddish at the edges and yellowish and greenish in the middle, pearly white tulips reminiscent of a Dutch still life, orange lilies, siblings of the ox-eye daisy, etc. The greatest botanical monstrosity was an extraterrestrial-looking lifeform which in terrestrial terms can be described as a cross between a Chinese lantern, hairy gooseberry, and the abdomen of a seasick bumblebee.
During the intermission there was a "making of" documentary, which instead of narration had a soundtrack with passages from Tchaikovsky's Nutcracker, an orchestral version of Mozart's Rondo alla turca, etc. (Of course we enjoyed naming the tune.) A cleaning lady dusted the caryatids, which truly gleamed; a violinist applied a cake of black rosin to his bow; the conductor scribbled notes on scores at a covered Bösendorfer piano; a truck arrived bringing the flowers from San Remo; the orchestra tuned; cameramen filmed each other as they filmed the Kunsthistorisches Museum and a fountain in a town at the Danube; and above all Valentino presented his designs for the ballet dancers' costumes to the press.
In the second part of the concert came the landscapery — modest vignettes of spots along the Danube, from Donaueschingen to the Black Sea, to accompany the waltz; as well as scenes from a hilariously tidy and romantically lit kitchen where a Viennese confectionery picturesquely creates its delicious-looking wares — and the theatrics — a ballet à deux somewhere and then the grand spectacle with six or so couples twirling around the museum. The costumes turned out well in my opinion, especially the flaring red dress in the first ballet. While the sparkles and colour-gradiented cloth cabbages on one or two of the pink gowns bordered on kitsch, they did convey the classic, whimsical greyish-pinkish ideal of the ballet frock as Degas painted it. In terms of utility, the fabric may have been too weighty. As for the dancing itself, Mama remarked approvingly afterwards that it was quite "dezent," but to me it felt more forced and artificial than it should. The fixed smiles are, for instance, really irritating, as are the clichéd mannerisms.
At this point I should write something insightful about the musical aspect of the offerings, but will sidestep the obligation for reasons of not having paid sufficient attention to it. What I did notice were passages where the orchestra were particularly united in their intuitive grasp of the quirks of the repertoire; with truly fine ensembles that is, of course, not rare. The offering from Otto Nicolai proved him a competent composer in my opinion, and the inclusion of Jacques Offenbach was also pleasing.
***
As for last evening, I woke up (since my sleeping schedule is in an outlandish phase again) for dinner. We ate the traditional Knackwurst (wiener) with potato salad, pickles and pickled silver onions, cider, and punch, as well as a healthy dish of sliced yellow bell pepper. Not being there for the entirety of the concocting process, I can only guess that the punch contains white wine, Sekt, tonic water, canned mandarin oranges and apricots. Some of us watched Dinner for One; Papa turned to the piano to let the gentler music of Mozart resound as the firecrackers banged in the streets. Outside the snow, pellets rather than flakes, descended thickly and swiftly so that the already impressive snow cover grew even deeper.
At midnight we watched the countdown broadcast live from the Brandenburg Gate, and at the right moment Papa popped open the bottle of Sekt. Mama poured it out, after which we clinked glasses and sang "Auld Lang Syne," and lit sparklers at a candle. We had opened the curtains so that the fireworks being set off on the sidewalks were visible from both sides, and enjoyed the show.
This evening we dined on prawns with lemon, fish in mushroom sauce, chicory salad with radicchio and oranges, an Alsatian white wine, rice, etc. Mama had also bought biscuits filled with jam and completed with a ring of coconutish meringue, or topped with crunchy hazelnuts/peanuts and dipped in chocolate.
***
Happy New Year!
The first part of the concert was "played straight" where the artistic direction was concerned, so we just saw the orchestra and audience and interior of the Wiener Musikverein, and no theatrics or splashy landscapery. Amongst the gimmickry this year there were instruments that mimicked the cuckoo and the duck; and though once a wooden block was used to impersonate the popping of a champagne cork, the second time there was even a special apparatus that, as far as one could tell given the rapid cuts between the camera angles, could spit out a cork as sonorously as the traditional bottle. The audience included the Austrian president Heinz Fischer with spouse (didn't know of or recognize him; the ORF narrator pointed him out), Roger Moore, kimono'd Japanese ladies, and someone who looked suspiciously like our dear finance minister Wolfgang Schäuble.
As for the floral decorations, I approved of them this year: yellow and orange and white roses, red anthuriums (they could have been uglier), ranunculus that was reddish at the edges and yellowish and greenish in the middle, pearly white tulips reminiscent of a Dutch still life, orange lilies, siblings of the ox-eye daisy, etc. The greatest botanical monstrosity was an extraterrestrial-looking lifeform which in terrestrial terms can be described as a cross between a Chinese lantern, hairy gooseberry, and the abdomen of a seasick bumblebee.
During the intermission there was a "making of" documentary, which instead of narration had a soundtrack with passages from Tchaikovsky's Nutcracker, an orchestral version of Mozart's Rondo alla turca, etc. (Of course we enjoyed naming the tune.) A cleaning lady dusted the caryatids, which truly gleamed; a violinist applied a cake of black rosin to his bow; the conductor scribbled notes on scores at a covered Bösendorfer piano; a truck arrived bringing the flowers from San Remo; the orchestra tuned; cameramen filmed each other as they filmed the Kunsthistorisches Museum and a fountain in a town at the Danube; and above all Valentino presented his designs for the ballet dancers' costumes to the press.
In the second part of the concert came the landscapery — modest vignettes of spots along the Danube, from Donaueschingen to the Black Sea, to accompany the waltz; as well as scenes from a hilariously tidy and romantically lit kitchen where a Viennese confectionery picturesquely creates its delicious-looking wares — and the theatrics — a ballet à deux somewhere and then the grand spectacle with six or so couples twirling around the museum. The costumes turned out well in my opinion, especially the flaring red dress in the first ballet. While the sparkles and colour-gradiented cloth cabbages on one or two of the pink gowns bordered on kitsch, they did convey the classic, whimsical greyish-pinkish ideal of the ballet frock as Degas painted it. In terms of utility, the fabric may have been too weighty. As for the dancing itself, Mama remarked approvingly afterwards that it was quite "dezent," but to me it felt more forced and artificial than it should. The fixed smiles are, for instance, really irritating, as are the clichéd mannerisms.
At this point I should write something insightful about the musical aspect of the offerings, but will sidestep the obligation for reasons of not having paid sufficient attention to it. What I did notice were passages where the orchestra were particularly united in their intuitive grasp of the quirks of the repertoire; with truly fine ensembles that is, of course, not rare. The offering from Otto Nicolai proved him a competent composer in my opinion, and the inclusion of Jacques Offenbach was also pleasing.
***
As for last evening, I woke up (since my sleeping schedule is in an outlandish phase again) for dinner. We ate the traditional Knackwurst (wiener) with potato salad, pickles and pickled silver onions, cider, and punch, as well as a healthy dish of sliced yellow bell pepper. Not being there for the entirety of the concocting process, I can only guess that the punch contains white wine, Sekt, tonic water, canned mandarin oranges and apricots. Some of us watched Dinner for One; Papa turned to the piano to let the gentler music of Mozart resound as the firecrackers banged in the streets. Outside the snow, pellets rather than flakes, descended thickly and swiftly so that the already impressive snow cover grew even deeper.
At midnight we watched the countdown broadcast live from the Brandenburg Gate, and at the right moment Papa popped open the bottle of Sekt. Mama poured it out, after which we clinked glasses and sang "Auld Lang Syne," and lit sparklers at a candle. We had opened the curtains so that the fireworks being set off on the sidewalks were visible from both sides, and enjoyed the show.
This evening we dined on prawns with lemon, fish in mushroom sauce, chicory salad with radicchio and oranges, an Alsatian white wine, rice, etc. Mama had also bought biscuits filled with jam and completed with a ring of coconutish meringue, or topped with crunchy hazelnuts/peanuts and dipped in chocolate.
***
Happy New Year!
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