jonathan powell's concert is tommorrow

[pianistimo]

don't forget.  isn't it tommorrow, alistair?!  i'm really bummed i can't make it.  what with braces on one child, community college tuition for the other, and the youngest wants swimming lessons.  oh well.  someday - jonathan powell will come to philly (maybe?) . 

i wish him the best of luck on everything excepting the last piece.  i hope it goes to hell in a handbasket.  then, i'd say - 'see - i told you never to make fun of a piece that is about john the baptist's head getting chopped.'  but, whatever - it's just a piece (not the head - the piece itself).  so - in any case - even if he messed up on the exact place where the head gets chopped - it would sound like a grisly head chopping and nothing else.  so - it really can't go terribly wrong.  unless a string breaks at that exact moment.

[ahinton]

don't forget.  isn't it tommorrow, alistair?!

Oui, c'est vrai.

i'm really bummed i can't make it.  what with braces on one child, community college tuition for the other, and the youngest wants swimming lessons.

I'm not being unsympathetic - and, of course, I have never had any children, so should probably keep quite on this - but I'm not entirely convinced that blaming the kids is necessarily always fair...

oh well.  someday - jonathan powell will come to philly (maybe?) .

I hope so, in both cases.

i wish him the best of luck on everything

Thanks - I'll pass that on.

excepting the last piece.  i hope it goes to hell in a handbasket.  then, i'd say - 'see - i told you never to make fun of a piece that is about john the baptist's head getting chopped.'  but, whatever - it's just a piece (not the head - the piece itself).  so - in any case - even if he messed up on the exact place where the head gets chopped - it would sound like a grisly head chopping and nothing else.  so - it really can't go terribly wrong.  unless a string breaks at that exact moment.

But who would you blame? Kaikhosru Shapurji Sorabji? Richard Strauss? Oscar Wilde? Regardless of which of these or none, you should surely know if you've heard Strauss's magnificent musik-drama that neither he nor Wilde "makes fun" of the severing or serving of the head in question and it is, in any case, merely one event in an opera of which Sorabji's description is encapsulated in the following note (which is the one I've put in tomorrow night's programme):

"Subtitled Konzertmäβige Übertragung für Klavier zu Zwei Händen, Sorabji’s “pianising” of the heady final scene from Strauss’s opera Salome dates from 1947, not long before Strauss’s death; it is his last and finest transcription.  Sorabji’s motivation for it some thirty years after encountering the original is unknown; no correspondence between composer and transcriber has yet been unearthed.  Sorabji’s deep respect and fulsome enthusiasm for Strauss’s first major stage work was, however, evident from the outset and never wavered.  In his book Mi Contra Fa: The Immoralisings of a Machivellian Musician, published in the year of this transcription, Sorabji wrote of
“that astonishing drama of exacerbated eroticism, Salome, for which the composer finds a musical language of unparalleled power, suppleness and concentrated vitriolic intensity of expression”.
Sorabji’s remarks on it in his earlier book Around Music bear quoting in extenso:
“…wonderful music-drama…Salome…incomparably his greatest stage work…caught and expressed with amazing and almost baleful power the perversely exotic and Oriental voluptuousness of Wilde’s play and has woven around it music of such inevitability, such perfect rightness that henceforth never can one think of the play apart from Strauss’s music.  The overheated tropical atmosphere and strained tensity that are maintained in this astonishing work from first bar to last mark it as one of Strauss’s masterpieces.  It reaches a level that he himself has never passed.  Supple, serpentine and insinuating, full of subtle suggestion, the music writhes and twists like a coil of smoke rising from an incense burner.  From the taut, nervous opening to the astonishing climax, the score is a forest of intricate effects and details of instrumentation that sound as convincing in their superbly triumphant audacity today as they did twenty years ago”.
Sorabji gave his personal copy of the full score of Salome (which he had at some time had leather-bound together with that of Elektra in a single volume) to Alistair Hinton on his birthday (Sorabji’s birthday, not Hinton’s!) in 1973; it is now in The Sorabji Archive collection and was the source material for Sorabji’s transcription."

So - there ya has it!

Please therefore feel free to extend your wellwishings to Jonathan for his performance of this transcription as much as you have already done in respect of the other seven works on the programme, especially since this closing work will be its world première!

Best,

Alistair

[pianistimo]

i can no more wish that that i would wish him dead a second time!  not jonathan powell, but john the baptist.  but, be that as it may - the piece will go very well especially if he imagines salome's head on the plate.  although, how should i know if he's even read the story of john the baptist.  in which case - the opera that richard strauss produced may be his only source of inspiration.  perhaps before tommorrow - he should at least peek at a few verses.  one verse that sticks out is that john the baptist was actually a cousin of Jesus Christ.  therefore - an intimate relative to him and not just a friend who happened to baptize him.  another point is that he was the only person (that i read) that actually SAW the dove descend on Jesus - which was the visual form of the Holy Spirit.  Christians often use this 'dove' symbol to express the holy spirit.

then, lastly - matthew 14 - which is the story.

very interesting - the stories of how the opera and the transcription came to be.  alistair - you must be very proud to have such important composers and pianists as close friends (as they must be and have been of you).  nothing bad could be said about that.  i'm just sticking up for the poor john who loses his head - as he was a martyred saint all because of this girl salome.  hopefully, two sides of the story will be told as this piece is played.  the sinisterness of what was to come from the dance.  a heady one , at that.

[ahinton]

i can no more wish that that i would wish him dead a second time!  not jonathan powell, but john the baptist.  but, be that as it may - the piece will go well if only he imagines salome's head on a plate.

I can't help but imagine coins on a silver collection platter, but then maybe I'm being overly optimistic! Don't you think in any case that, in devising the programme that he has, Jonathan is the one who's put his head on the block?!

Best,

Alistair

[mephisto]

Alistair do you actually speak french or do you only now cute phrases like oui, c'est vrai, bien-sur, c'es la vie, etc?

Wish me good luck on the soon to come results on my resent written french exam

[ahinton]

Alistair do you actually speak french or do you only now cute phrases like oui, c'est vrai, bien-sur, c'es la vie, etc?

Wish me good luck on the soon to come results on my resent written french exam

I regret that I speak very little French, the phrases you mention are hardly "cute", "bien sur" is not hyphenated and "c'es la vie" should read "c'est la vie", so yes, I wish you the best of luck with the results of your French exam; it is said that the French are happy to call one of their towns Lille but the Norwegians, not content with that, had to add a hammer thereto...

Best,

Alistair

[thalbergmad]

Del Boy French, as we say in England.

Thal

[ahinton]

Del Boy French, as we say in England.

Thal

YOU might say that; I couldn't possibly comment! Anyway, how's your Gælic?

Best,

Alistair

[mephisto]

I regret that I speak very little French, the phrases you mention are hardly "cute", "bien sur" is not hyphenated and "c'es la vie" should read "c'est la vie", so yes, I wish you the best of luck with the results of your French exam; it is said that the French are happy to call one of their towns Lille but the Norwegians, not content with that, had to add a hammer thereto...

Best,

Alistair

I see.

The "c'es la vie" was just a misspelling. I was aware that it was c'est la vie. This may of course be hard to belive, since is also can be called es when it is used in a different context. Je suis, tu es, il est etc.

What you mean by your last sentence I am unable to understand. Could you please explain?

Most of my friends actually call me Lille. My name Bjørn, translates as Bear, and when I was younger everybody just called me Lille Bjørn or just Lille. Wich means little-Bear, a curse that still follows me today. So I feel a special connection with the French city or ville if you want to of Lille.

[ahinton]

What you mean by your last sentence I am unable to understand. Could you please explain?

I was referring to a town in your country; see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lillehammer

Best,

Alistair

[mephisto]

 

[thalbergmad]

Bollox, missed it.

Did not get out of work until 7.15.

Please ensure future concerts are on Saturdays.

Thanks

Thal