Widor Toccata duet stunt

Makes you tired just watching it! Watch this space for more on Mr Hewitt Jones's latest project - making No. 1 with the Facebook Song (all will be explained)...

Theme and Variations

Sometimes I find that weeks or days seem to be shaped by a particular theme, often for no apparent reason. Slipping back in time for a brief moment, last Monday's theme was most definitely the "String Quartet". Against the background of news from my old home, King's College, that their newly instated quartet in residence, the Dante Quartet, had been awarded the Royal Philharmonic Society's Chamber Music Award came two wonderful (and wonderfully different) quartet concerts in my current home. First up was the Quatuor Leonis's long awaited (well, by me at least) lunchtime performance of Schubert's Death and the Maiden Quartet. The intense moods conjured by this masterpiece never fail to astound: throughout a turbulent wildness seems to bubble beneath the surface, and because often restrained by the repetition of rhythmic motifs, a sense of real emotional depth and power is created (Think of the cumulative effect of the melodic reticence, harmonic pacing and rhythmic insistence of the second movement Theme and Variations). Hot on the heels of this concert came that of another French string quartet, the internationally known Quatuor Ysaÿe. Given in Lyon's auditorium as part of a wider series of concerts entitled "Les Grands Interprètes" which has welcomed a range of artists including Alfred Brendel (and I would have to be in England for that concert!), the twenty-three year old quartet performed Haydn's "Seven Last Words of Christ from the Cross". Not the easiest of musical worlds to enter into (Haydn himself confessed that "it was no easy task to compose seven adagios lasting ten minutes each, and to succeed one another without fatiguing the listeners; indeed, I found it quite impossible to confine myself to the appointed limits", the work combines spoken texts (performed here by the intriguing French philosopher Michel Serres) with music (originally for orchestra, then transcribed for string quartet). Despite the incongruous setting of a vast contemporary concert hall, the combination of the exquisitely articulated sonorities of French with the mellifluous string sonority of the quartet seemed to match the meditative aim of the work. And funnily enough, in a neat tying up of loose ends, because after all writing lets you tie up the loose ends that life can't, it turns out that the Quatuor Leonis are often coached/mentored by the Quatuor Ysaÿe, and that the last work performed by the Dante Quartet in King's was none other than Haydn's "Seven Last Words".

l'AIR

Throughout my year in Lyon, countless festivals for dance, music, cinema, theatre and art have taken place. In almost my very first week several streets were roped off and filled with people whirling, swirling and jumping in all directions as part of Lyon's biennale de la danse (my unexplained profile pic is, as you might have surmised, not me but a colourfully costumed dancer from this very festival). Via festivals of light and festivals of music both ancient and electronic, it's now Literature's turn. Beginning with a reading by Russel Banks on Monday night, Lyon's bookshops, libraries and a venue called Les Subsistances, will be home to an international cast of authors taking part in round table discussions, readings, and public meetings. Hosted by the Villa Gillet, the Assises Internationales du Roman is billed as an event for all and promises to be thought-provoking and enjoyable. Round table themes include "Littérature et engagement: le pouvoir des mots", "Le roman: un miroir social" and "Le romancier face à la réalité de ses personnages", and four authors will be tackling each theme. Big British names include John Banville, A.S.Byatt and Tobias Hill.

Here's a link for more info: http://www.villagillet.net/

Words and scenes

After a week of blogging silence, prepare yourselves for a flurry of posts (silence and a cup of coffee make for an interesting combination - hopefully I won't come across as too hyperactive and nonsensical!) So what's been going on this week? Well, apart from me becoming slightly worried about the power of words - I wrote about tea, the next morning our kettle broke; I wrote about shipwrecks, the next day the Cutty Sark went up in flames - Lyon has been quite the hive of activity. Classic French scenes of the past week or two have included swathes of people congregating in Place Bellecour to play la boule lyonnaise (From what I can glean, la boule lyonnaise - recently renamed sport-boule - isn't exactly the same as pétanques, but is very similar); a parade of protesters 'manifesting', followed by a considerably larger number of police officers in vans and unmarked cars; people dashing through torrential rain clutching baguettes and for a final cliché, workmen preparing Lyon's Roman amphitheatre for summer concerts lunching VERY leisurely under a gleaming white marquee erected on the stage. (Instating long lunches in England is high on my list of priorities). So as to avoid gargantuan posts (I'm always told off for writing mammoth sentences and paragraphs), I'll split up everything else into separate nuggets. Keep reading...

Treasure!

Ah-har! Well, shiver me timbers, tis a shipwreck I spy!

Me beauty, ye can't beat a good old-fashioned shipwreck really, especially one which be claimed t' be the "World's Largest Historical Shipwreck" with "Record 17 Tons o' Silver Currency". Dark an' stormy nights, jagged rocks, quests for treasure, secret locations, ulterior motives ... more at BBC News.

N! Avast!! B!. This post be "translated" from English t' Pirate-ish by "The Voices o' Many" website. Strange but true.

The Runaway Train or Maggaly the Metro

Don't all laugh at once, but one of my childhood ambitions - or so I seem to remember - was to be a train driver. Funny then, that one of my favourite things in Lyon - here speaks my inner-(or not so inner) child - should be the driver-less train. Between Gare de Vaise and Gare de Venisseux, (surely Lyon metro's answer to Tweedledee and Tweedledum), which top and tail the thread of green winding its way across the Lyonnaise metroscape, there runs a two-carriaged, bright orange, completely-automated shuttle train. Day and night (well until at least 00:19 ) this little train dashes about Lyon, slipping underneath both the Rhone and the Saone, joining East to West, and all without a single driver. Metro line D's homage to the Stansted terminal shuttle bus? The result of a thwarted train designer's desire to build roller coasters? Perhaps said train designer played too many Star Wars computer games late at night and became confused? Just as, when seated at the very front or very back of Maggaly the Metro*, the dark underground tunnel, lit only by faintly glowing blue lights, spirals away into the distance; an endless list of explanations for the driver-less train suggests itself. Who knows where the idea came from? Well, this fan doesn't really mind. Let the origins of the brilliant train remain lost in the mists of time, leaving us fans free to take up our seats in front of the glass bubble windows at either end of each carriage, and to enjoy whizzing about in underground tunnels, pretending to drive the train.

*Maggaly the Metro, Thomas the Tank Engine's French girlfriend. For a few factual titbits about Maggaly, see her personal page at wikipedia.

How to cook frog's legs...

Garlic (lots of). Check.
Parsley. Check.
Butter (for frying). Check.
Red wine (mostly for drinking).Check.
Huge pile of frog's legs flown in from Thailand becase, according to the chef, there aren't enough frogs left in France. Check. (Then take a deep breath).

And yes, I did try them. And yes, they were quite nice. And no, I probably won't be eating them again in a hurry because, try as I might, I can't forget that the platter of small white bows of meat, glistening with parsley and smelling of garlic, was once thirty green little frogs, sitting in a row.


 

Britannia rules the waves

The river banks of the Rhone have never looked so good. Under the current mayor of Lyon, the riverside has been transformed from a vast car park into a country playground for city dwellers with a wooden promenade, benches, swathes of wild flowers, moored boats with bars and tables spilling out onto the land, as well as a real playground for children that includes a wooden shipwreck. And back in England you might be proud, and perhaps surprised, to find out that one of the twelve namesakes of the riverbank areas is Ellen MacArthur. Yes, in Lyon there is now a "Berge Dame Ellen MacArthur". The sailing heroine's "berge" sits alongside those of eleven women from all over the world, from all walks of life: Marlene Dietrich (German-American), Clara Campoamor (Spanish), Renata Tebaldi (Italian), Amalia Rodrigues (Portugese), Reine Astrid (Belgian), Aletta Jacobs (?!), Melina Mercouri (Greek), Marie Sklodowska Curie (French-Polish), Karen Blixen (Danish), Anna Lindh (Swedish), Bertha Von Suttner (Austrian). Oh, and there are two weekends of parties to celebrate coming up. I'm particularly fascinated by the event described as "jazz de legumes". Any ideas what this might be?

So English...

One of the best things about being English in France, and by the same coin I imagine one of the best things about being French in England, is that France and England are just similar enough that you don't feel completely at sea, and just different enough that you feel like you are in a foreign country. A classic example: tea versus coffee. It's easy to find tea here, but drinking more than one cup every two or three days, especially if -quelle horreur- you add milk, is an instant giveaway. (I'm reading Agatha Christie in French at the moment: the first sentence is "C'était à Miss Somers de faire le thé." A paragraph later the lucky Miss Somers has managed to boil the water for the tea, two and half pages later "Votre thé, monsieur Fortescue", NINE pages later and the tea seems to be more important than any of the characters in the book- "C'est vous qui avez prepare le thé de Mr. Fortescue ... Et le thé, d'où venait-il? ... un thé de Chine special ... "etc. etc.. Talk about lost in translation.) Of course, it helps that a few years back the English pinched a whole lot of words from the French (only the good ones mind) and now the French are getting their revenge by stealing some back (though not evocative or quintessentially English words like "pitter-patter" or "hodge-podge", but words like "stop" (making the strange verb "stopper") and "looking" (as in "re-looking", for a make-over), as well as the more obvious ones like "internet" or "le weekend". So, seeing as I can't think of a good way to end this post, I'll sign off now, go and drink my cup of tea, read my Agatha Christie, and contemplate whether I can bring myself to eat the bowl of frog's legs currently sitting in my fridge (more of which another time)...

A conversation?

"That's the opera house?"
"Yup."
"That sort of black road hump thing?"
"Yup."
"In the distance? that looks like the station?"
"Yes."
"The opera house?!"

My guests weren't convinced. Admittedly, from a distance, looking across at Lyon's opera house from next to the basilica at Fourviere, the rooftop doesn't immediately shout out "opera house"; its message is more along the lines of "train anoraks this way" or "keep your jumbo jet here". Perhaps I exaggerate, but when standing opposite the nineteenth century neo-classical front entrance, looking at the neat rows of arches, it's hard to believe that roof and facade belong to the same brick walls. Yet those four outside walls are the largest part of what survived the opera house revamp in the early 90s. Revamp is a mild way of putting it, the opera house was gutted head to toe leaving only the external shell. Described by its architect Jean Nouvel as establishing a dialogue between history and modernity, Lyon Opera now sports an auditorium dressed entirely in black, stainless steel staircases straight out of the Crystal Maze's future zone, a Escher-like foyer with single-file escalators sprouting at unexpected angles, huge red lights and red padded walls, with just a smattering of history in the form of mirrors and chandeliers. Not so much a dialogue as a full on slanging match.

No riots then...

but an hour or so after that post, Place Bellecour was filled by people protesting against Sarko. Take a look at Annie's blog for a few close up photos, or for a short video (which seems to be more noise than anything else) swing by trusty old YouTube.

All change

Up-to-date news bulletins are not exactly part of this blog's stamping ground, but I don't think being in France on the day that a new president is elected and not mentioning this fact is allowable. So it's Sarkozy in, Royal left out, Chirac out. No riots here yet, though given that on Thursday night 92.6% of students (well 92.6% of the handful of students at a 'soiree') at the ENS-LSH in Lyon said that they would vote for Royal I don't think champagne-all-round is order of the day. All change, please.

Just a reminder.

If you are at a loose end in Lyon tomorrow at lunchtime, here's something to do.

Les pensionnaires scientifiques étrangers de l'ENS vous invitent tous ce jeudi 3 mai à 12h30, au théâtre Kantor, à leur représentation de la pièce de Boris Vian "Un Radical barbu", une comédie farfelue qui épingle les us et coutumes de la politique française ... des années 1940 et 1950. De quoi détendre l'atmosphère entre les deux tours ! L'entrée est libre et la durée du spectacle, préparé dans le cadre d'un projet pédagogique du Centre de ressources en langues/Français Langue Etrangère et de la section Lettres et Arts/Etudes théâtrales, est d'environ 1/2 heure.

That's at the ENS in the septieme (Debourg), 12.30, free entry.