Donald's Blog
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This old house was only a few blocks from the state Capitol in Madison,
Wisconsin. All the neighborhood cats lived in the basement during the
winter. The house has long since been torn down, but in 1972 there were
AR2ax speakers in the front room, and a lot of good music was heard there. |
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In the 21st century I am just as opinionated as ever,
and I now have an outlet. I shall pontificate here about anything
that catches my fancy; I hope I will not make too great a fool
of myself. You may comment yea or nay about anything on the
site; I may quote you here, or I may not. Send brickbats etc.
to: dmclarke78@icloud.com.
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April 22, 2010Music in the Lehigh ValleyWe are certainly not hurting for live music in this area.
On 31 March we went to the Williams Center for the Arts at Lafayette College in Bethlehem to hear the Brentano String Quartet, who have been together for 18 years. They were supposed to play Stephen Hartke's Night Songs for a Desert Flower, followed by Schubert's famous Quartetsatz, and after the interval, Schubert's Quartet in G Major Op. 161. In the event they switched the first two pieces around, playing the Quartetsatz first, which was a very good idea, warming up the audience with the single "quartet movement" before tackling the Hartke.
I had not heard of Hartke, who was born in 1952 in New Jersey, but I know I will be hearing more of him. The Brentano played the first performance of Night Songs for a Desert Flower last October, and I hope they record it. I don't know how much I am influenced by titles, but in the four movements of the quartet I could almost see and smell the desert at night. It is "modern" music, but I did not find it at all difficult. I am always reminded of something Steve Schwartz likes to say: People say they have tried modern music and found it difficult, but actually thay have found it difficult and not tried it. The best part is that it did not sound like anybody else's music; Hartke has a musical intelligence all his own.
And after the break, although I usually find that the big Schubert quartets seem to go on a bit, I enjoyed this performance. For one thing, weirdly, there were echoes of the Hartke: after hearing that, Schubert's cascades of 16th notes sounded like insects skittering in the sand, evidence (for me, anyway) that Hartke is not so avant-garde as all that, but in the tradition. And Mark Steinberg, the first violinist, was great fun to watch throughout the concert, so totally involved in the music that I wondered how he could play so beautifully while putting so much body language into it.
On 9 April we went to the Foy Concert Hall at Moravian College, at the other end of Main Street, where the Chamber Music Society of Bethlehem presented the Jupiter String Quartet, playing Haydn's Op. 76 No. 2 ("Fifths"), then Bartók's Quartet No. 4 (1928), and after the interval, joined by Benjamin Kim, the Schumann Piano Quintet. The Haydn was beautifully played, and more fun than a room full of monkeys; the group obviously adore the music, as quartet players must.
The Bartók was described in the Morning Call as his "most popular" quartet: I don't know if it would do to describe any of his quartets as popular, but the program note at the gig was more realistic: "Like the Third Quartet of the previous year, it represents Bartók's most uncompromisingly dissonant and expressionistic style." Its five movements are almost like a palindrome: the first and last are "harsh, densely contrapuntal, and driven hard"; the second movement is a scherzo played at breakneck speed, and the fourth uses a version of the same theme, but played with plucked strings. The kernel is the beautiful slow central movement. It was all extremely well played, but the harshness will never be "popular".
I was mildly disappointed in the Schumann piano quintet, probably spoiled by listening to closely-miked slam-bang performances on records. It seemed a bit perfunctory. I would rather have heard another quartet.
The Jupiter have been going almost ten years. The second violinist, Megan Freivogel, is married to the cellist, Daniel McDonough, and violist Liz Freivogel is Meg's sister. One of the delights of their concert was watching Meg's pretty, lively face and her large expressive eyes as she kept her eye on the leader, first violinist Nelson Lee. I think Ethne and I have seen both the Brentano and the Jupiter before, the Brentano in Austin and the Jupiter in Des Moines, and once again I regret that I have not kept all my concert programs.
On 11 April we went to hear the Allentown Symphony Orchestra play "Gypsy Rhythms." You will not be surprised to learn that this concert began with an Enesco Rumanian Rhapsody and ended with a Liszt Hungarian Rhapsody. (The Enesco seemed to go on a bit, like a comic piece where you turn over the last page only to find that there's another last page, and another...) In between however there was more interesting stuff. Since a cimbalom soloist (Laurence Kaptain) was going to be required for Kodály's Háry János Suite, the Symphony got its money's worth by playing Stravinsky's Ragtime for Eleven Instruments at the front of the stage. This was fun, but it could have swung a little more; the ragtime message didn't quite get across the way it does in Stravinsky's own recording. This was conducted by associate conductor Ronald Demkee, the rest of the concert by Diane Wittry.
The third piece on the program was the Háry János Suite, six instrumental numbers arranged from Kodály's fantastical singspiel, and provided one of those moments that concert-goers hope for. The third piece in the Suite is the yearning "Song", and the orchestra's principal violist, Agnes Maurer, had a solo in it; and one of her notes had to be held for a few beats, and her interpretation of that -- that is, her intonation on that note -- was so right that it thrilled me right down to my socks.
After the interval was Bartók's Concerto for Orchestra, which I have loved all my life and never had a chance to hear live before. The piece was commissioned from the destitute composer in New York during WWII, but you'd never know that he was also dying of leukemia. The orchestra played well for Wittry, as it always does, and the wonderful solo bits for oboes, clarinets, bassoons and so on were a delight. In fact some of Wittry's tempi were on the deliberate side, so that I heard some of the solo bits from a new perspective, and there was bit of swing here and there that I had missed in the Stravinsky.
Finally, the Liszt Hungarian Rhapsody was the Bugs Bunny one, and made a nice encore.
And on 16 April we walked to Muhlenberg College, just a few blocks away from home, to hear Richard Goode play in the College's piano recital series. We were looking forward to walking, so of course that evening it rained. The Morning Call had said that the concert would be in the Empie Theatre at Chew Street and 24th, but did not say that the Empie is inside the Baker Center, and since 23rd, 24th and 25th don't go through there on account of the big campus, the directions were quite useless. But we made it in time. Goode is the first American-born pianist to record all of the Beethoven piano sonatas, and I used to lust after that Nonesuch box, but its full price was sufficient to deter me. Goode's facial expressions as he plays are a sight to behold, as though he is talking to the music, and I didn't mind a bit; it was a sign of his absolute involvement. He played three preludes & fugues of Bach, and three sonatas of Haydn, and again, the Haydn was a lot of fun. We had recently heard a Haydn sonata on the radio (played by Emmanuel Ax); you don't hear them too often, and we were happy to hear more.
After the interval Goode played Schumann's Kreisleriana, and for the second time in the last few years, I got a bit closer to Schumann's big Romantic piano music; it is necessary to understand that he was also a writer, and that for him there were always literary associations. The program notes, apparently written by Goode himself, were a help here. Altogether a worthwhile end to a month of concert-going.
April 22, 2010Hope It's a Misprint.
From one of those reviews on Amazon:
Ethne Clarke's beautifully derailed description of plants and gardens are an inspiration to gardeners everywhere. Her work has appeared in magazines...
April 22, 2010Ken Lay Was Not the Only Elmer FuddI have written before about Merrill Lynch, about how we came back to the USA from England in 1998 and had some money from the sale of Sycamore Barn in Norfolk, invested it with them, and suddenly we no longer had a "personal banker" one day because we didn't have enough money: they had lost half of it in the dotcom bust.
Last Sunday in the New York Times Daniel Gross reviewed two good books on the Great Recession: The Big Short, by Michael Lewis, already a best-seller, and The End of Wall Street, by Roger Lowenstein. I laughed out loud when I read this:
But it took Wall Street chief executives, a bunch of feckless dolts, to light the bonfire. The Merrill Lynch C.E.O. Stanley O'Neal, taking a break from his frequent golf games, was completely surprised in the summer of 2007 when he learned Merrill was stuck with $48 billion of collateralized debt obligations it couldn’t sell.
We are all at the mercy of feckless dolts. That sounds about right.
April 22, 2010O PennsylvaniaI have mentioned before all the trouble we've had trying to obey the law in Pennsylvania: registering our vehicles, obtaining a driver's license, my Social Security card (which has worked for over 50 years) was no good and I had to get another one, then the state would not accept the title to my truck and I had to get a new one from Iowa, and on and on. Finally they were registered.
Then we found out that they have two annual vehicle inspections here, one for emissions and one for safety. First I went to a Ford dealer, Haldeman Ford on West Tilghman Street, with my dear little Ford Ranger to find out why the "check engine" light was on, and found out there was something wrong with the transmission, which I already suspected. Then I went to a transmission specialist, who checked to make sure it wasn't a loose wire or a solenoid switch, and gave the transmission a regular service, which didn't work. At this point I had spent nearly $400 on diagnostics and service. Then I gave up.
I regretted that I had registered the truck in Pennsylvania: if I had just left the Iowa plates on it I wouldn't need the inspection stickers on the windshield. I was told that no one would inspect the vehicle with the "check engine" light on, and that it was impractical to start taking the transmission apart to find out what was wrong unless you were going to overhaul it, because if you find something wrong and fix it, that might not make the light go off, and even if it does, if the transmission needs overhauling then there'll just be something else wrong six months from now. And overhauling it or replacing it would cost well over $2000, which is more than my sweet little truck is worth, and anyway, if you overhaul the transmission it might turn out to be the computer that's at fault. (Yes, in 1997 the little Ford pickup was already computerised.)
So the state of Pennsylvania is forcing me to junk my truck or trade it in? So it doesn't shift as smoothly as it used to: so what? It gets me back and forth to work just fine. And what does the transmission have to do with emissions or safety? (Oh, if it isn't shifting efficiently, one might use a teaspoon more gasoline on each trip up Hwy 22 to the shopping mall.) Furthermore, the truck is paid for, and I don't want to start making car payments again. So I was driving it without stickers; if I get caught, the fine is $150, and I'll just pay it.
Then I happened to visit a car dealer (we bought Ethne's Toyota Matrix when the lease ran out), and chatting to the blokes in the showroom, I heard the words "waiver" and "exemption". Then I went to a tire and muffler shop and had a lot of laughs, talking to guys who were born and raised in Pennsylvania and had a lot of sympathy, but who couldn't help because they don't have an emissions specialist. They sent me up the road to another garage, where the man cut me right off: "We don't do waivers." You have to take an extra course and get certified to do waivers, it seems, but this guy got shirty just like the service department at the Ford dealer, because I keep asking questions and they're not giving me answers so I have to keep asking questions.
I finally ended up at Greg's Auto & Tire Service in Emmaus, half a mile down the road from the Rodale office where Ethne works. And I finally found out that you somehow have to get past the emissions test before you can pass the safety test (which makes no sense: does the state want me to be driving a car with bald tires and bad brakes because the "check engine" light is on?) That what Haldeman Ford should have done in the first place was test the truck for emissions "as it is" and let it fail: that is the first step. That if I then spend over $150 trying to put it right I can get a waiver. And that if I then drive it less than 5000 miles back and forth to work, next year I'll be exempt from the emissions test. (No more trips to Iowa, Texas, Mexico; Little Greenie will be semi-retired.) Simple enough, innit.
Yesterday I got the two stickers on my windshield, and it only took five months to find out what I needed to know.