Hurricanes/earthquakes and 'gggs' knows what! around the world....
It’s always rather quaint how the Americans introduce the Proms with ‘THE’ omitted before Royal Albert Hall. There is another example of this in another context - that ‘the’ forgets;)
Iris ter Schiphorst’s Gravitational Waves (no ‘the’) initially sounds like Luciano Berio, then very swiftly makes a world of its own as a precursor to R.Stauss’s Also Sprach Zarathustra- a good Nietsche read not that I have for a while….but I do.
Kinda ironic that the BBC YOUTH are playing the work of the somewhat Nazi loved/much hated Nazi Richard Strauss. Now: that is complicated. The latter not former. Maybe both. Many, many, many, still wish not/never to understand the complexities of that ‘era’. The jury is still rather still ‘out’ regards Furtwängler and Herbert von Karajan regards the Hitler reign. Strauss showed ‘apparently’ no humility when the Americans arrived at his villa. He descended the stairs declaring “I am Richard Strauss composer of Salome and Der Rosenkavalier”. Irony (if ever there was a definition that 'the' American corporal John de Lancie was an orchestral oboe player in a better life. Suggested to Strauss that he compose something for oboe. Not a ‘get out of goal free/ card but years later, Strauss composed his one and only Oboe Concerto for the ‘guy’.
Youngsters have an ‘edge’. Always have, always will. But the have and the will seems get stronger and stronger and stronger as the youth gets younger! The National Youth Orch of Great Brit no exception. (What that performance must have sounded like in the cavernous Royal Albert Hall-something to be said for listening to period instruments on headphones over the airwaves;) As great as great orchestras are unless they have a really great conductor reminding them of ‘that’ there is a rather beauticious auto-pilot that can set in a very seductive smooth ride home. Hard to believe any ANY composer in the world would have asked for that! What is that marking:? Agagio con chocolat mit shwanengesang !
I happened to be in Berlin the week after conductor Giuseppe Sinopoli died and a then youthful Daniel Harding conducted the then youthful Chamber Orchestra of Europe in Mahler’s uncompleted 10th Symphony. That performance would have made Sinopoli so so proud. For those of us who get older yet still think young it’s a strange feeling. As if we are still students knowing nothing much about anything yet brave (or foolhardy) enough to believe unequivocally that what we are doing and thinking is right! Retaining that brazen enthusiasm and drive knowing, yet, that the world gets better but also knowing that it so often only gets worse. Old before our time. Forever old from birth. Strange. Losing that sense of wonder and doubt is a sure fast track to grow old.
Italian author Italo Calvino collated and edited a big book of fairy tales. But the fairies were inevitably real and humans the fakers. The first story Dauntless Little John is a few pages long. He is the bravest of the bravest of the brave. Undefeatable. Until one day he turns around, sees his shadow and drops down dead.
