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Charles Baudelaire on Delacroix’s death in 1863, “is the invisible, the impalpable, the dream, the nerves, the soul; and this he has done...with no other means but colour and contour.”
Just returned home from an art opening and caught conductor Marin Alsop and the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra in the Shostakovich 5 at the BBC Proms. Irony: that I heard the very fluid performance on the same tinny radio that I heard the Bernstein Mahler 9 that I didn't know was B/M 9! Is that really irony or mere serendipity? Discuss.
The 'funny' 'fascinating' is that there is a wonderful anecdote from Marin Alsop in the 11 hour Leonard Bernstein audio: she relates how she conducted a piece as a student. There's a break. Bernstein ushers her outside whilst he takes a cigarette. He says to her that it's great. BUT: what is it you feel inside about the music?
That's what I heard on my little radio without headphones (the BBC Proms via WMHT). Maestro Alsop listened. Shostakovich is never about hammer blows. Rather, the rippling water of the Volga. There is beauty in this terrible despair. The Rheinmaidens want to embrace you. But then….
It’s 7.45pm an d pitch black already. Still have to spray the mosquitos away. I guess there will never be a posivitive ‘Rotten Tomatoes’ Mosquito movie. Hmm…do tjhey do any good Mr David Attenborough? It’s the sad, beautiful same weather upstate as last year when Hurricane Irma was so incessant. Florence….what about a ‘bloke’ hurricane next year. Could he do any better? Florence was relatively very well behaved this year, though.
It’s great to listen to classical musical in the pitch black at 80 degrees. 60…???? No barking squirrels…get them hooked when thems 2” tall and maybe just maybe. Mosquitos are a dead loss. They don’t even recognize the 30second fallen. Remins me of some humans Tonya Harding….:) !
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