Sun, 11 Nov 2007

Pelleas and Melisande

I've started listening to Schoenberg's symphonic poem, "Pelleas und Melisande". Karajan's 1974 recording with the Berliner Philharmoniker orchestra is superb!

... rarement on aura entendu ces œuvres parées d'une telle splendeur instrumentale et traduites avec un lyrisme et un dramatisme aussi intensément nuancé. (La Revue des Disques, 1975)

I found a synopsis of the drama by Maurice Maeterlinck, upon which Schoenberg's symphonic poem is based, but obviously knowledge of the action gets you only so far in understanding the music, which is enormously dense and complex.

I found reading Glenn Gould's article on "The prospects of recording" (published 1966 in "High Fidelity" magazine) very illuminating - a real "ear-opening" experience for me. Karajan's Schoenberg recording is a brilliant example of what can be achieved in a recording studio - a presence, immediacy and clarity of sound impossible to produce in a concert hall. So much closer to the composer's intention than what you will ever hear live.

Informed by Gould, I think I understand more fully recordings of works which are far more "canonical", far less "advanced", indeed far less complex than "Pelleas und Melisande" - for example Tchaikovsky's 4th symphony. In Georg Solti's 1984 recording with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, even the last movement makes sense to me while the 1st movement has proved to be addictive! Not a single tone gets lost in the muddle, not even in fortissimo passages. Everything is extremely transparent - and yet so powerful!

Posted on 11 Nov 2007 at 19:53 in /life/music. -- Permalink

Updated the stylesheet again

I put more of the style info into the CSS file and made the name of the blog (at the top of the page) clickable - this makes it easy to go back "home" from wherever you are in this blog.

Posted on 11 Nov 2007 at 17:07 in /technology/internet/blosxom. -- Permalink

Double slashes in RSS links

I just realised that I get those double slashes only in the RSS feed link on the main page, i.e. for the "root directory" - not in the RSS feed links for other directories (/technology/internet and the like). Seems strange to me!

Posted on 11 Nov 2007 at 17:02 in /technology/internet/blosxom. -- Permalink

Picture gallery: yesterday's yacht tour

Photos we took yesterday are available here.

Posted on 11 Nov 2007 at 16:37 in /technology/photography. -- Permalink

Another blog I found on the way

That's Jason Clark's weblog, where I got the "moreentries" plugin for Blosxom.

Posted on 11 Nov 2007 at 15:04 in /technology/internet. -- Permalink

Some readings for Remembrance Day

The armistice agreement which ended the 1st World War was signed on 11 November 1918 - 89 years ago. Here are some readings for the day:

• Zechariah 4:6 (Moravian Watchword for today - Old Testament)
• Matthew 5:9 (Moravian Watchword for today - New Testament)
• Job 19:25-27 (Old Testament reading for today)
• 2 Thessalonians 2 (Epistle reading for today)
• Luke 20:27-38 (Gospel reading for today)
• John Donne's Holy Sonnet "Death, be not proud ..."
• W. H. Auden's "Stop all the clocks ..."
• Dylan Thomas's "Do not go gentle into that good night ..."

Posted on 11 Nov 2007 at 14:48 in /life. -- Permalink

Website start page slightly changed

I made some changes to the start page of my site - mostly cosmetic, but I finally threw out the link to my Twitter page (which I've grown sick and tired of) and added some other links to make the page more usable. Above all, I added a link to this blog here.

Posted on 11 Nov 2007 at 13:56 in /technology/internet. -- Permalink

Junk outing on St. Martin's Day

Or rather, on the day before St. Martin's, and our boat wasn't precisely a junk either but a veritable yacht, all white and very posh. We went from Aberdeen to the east coast of Lantau Island, enjoyed a short devotion at a Trappist monastery, which included a performance of the story of St. Martin by a few children. Then went on a comfortable hike (about half an hour) to Discovery Bay, which is an expats' heaven or nightmare, depending on your perspective. A kind of artificial village full of luxury chain stores and restaurants.

They do have a nice beach there, however, where we had a picnic - all of us sharing their food with each other, so we had evidently learned a lesson from the children's performance (cf. The Legend of the Cloak). Went back on the yacht (which was provided free to the German Protestant church community by Bayer, the chemicals company) after sunset. B and I had a beer or two at the pastors' place before returning home; we fell into our beds dead tired.

I hope to post a few photos soon.

Posted on 11 Nov 2007 at 13:06 in /life. -- Permalink