Russian monarchs

Spotted in a Bristol window…

Bartók's Violinists (1)

Bela Bartók was a pianist – and a pretty darn good one at that – but he also had a bit of a thing for the violin. While his own experience could furnish him with the necessary knowledge to write everything from pedagogical exercises (Mikrokosmos) to dazzling showcase pieces (the Piano Concertos) for the piano, he turned to others for inspiration when it came to the violin. Behind each of the Hungarian composer's violin works, then, you're likely to find a real person, a tantalising story, enshrined in music.

It started with Stefi Geyer. Bartók was infatuated with the young violinist, and in 1907, when she was 17 and he was 26, wrote her a Concerto. Spilling the beans about the intensity of his feeling for her in his letters only seems to have served to make her run…

Here's a taste of her playing:



And here's the lushly Romantic, rarely played First Violin Concerto that Bartók penned for her. The first movement was, he wrote, 'the idealised Stefi, celestial and inward'; she herself described it as a portrait of 'the young girl he loved'.

Road rage à la francaise

It’s a la mode, at the moment, the ‘velo’. Boris bikes in London, vélibs in Paris (shame Bristol, the UK’s ‘No. 1’ cycling city has ditched its scheme). But hopping on to a free bike isn’t without its perils. The obvious challenges of the free-for-all Etoiles roundabout aside, there’s the two-wheel version of road rage to contend with: Velib vitriol, let’s call it. Queuing up outside the Hotel de Ville for the Impressionists exhibition (free, fantastic, for more, check back here), a little vignette amused me. An impeccably chic French woman in her 40s, clothed in a little black coat and sporting little lunettes, tottered in on her unwieldy vélib. Alas, no space to be seen. As she wobbled up and down the row of bikes, hoping, perhaps, that one of the parked cycles might disappear, she made the fatal mistake of not checking behind her. Et allez, hop, a cyclist zipped out of their space, et voila, another - zut, alors - someone else! - nipped in. Eagle-eyes and a killer instinct are, clearly, necessary accessories for any Parisian cyclists, ones this rider, for all her elegance, didn’t possess: ‘I’ve been waiting for ten minutes!’ she shouted, practically hitting the unchivalrous usurper with her handbag, '10 minutes!’ (All the while notching up the euros, if she was already over half an hour.) ‘I’m not scared of you,’ he flashed back (Yes, he did actually say this). ’10 minutes!’ Cue flurry of French abuse. The queue, at that point, moved on; the Velibtriol faded into the distance.

Thought

Writing is a form of therapy; sometimes I wonder how all those who do not write, compose, or paint can manage to escape the madness, melancholia, the panic and fear which is inherent in a human situation.
Graham Greene

Happy Birthday Brahms

Here's the Poco allegretto from his Symphony No. 3, performed by the Berlin Philharmonic under Wilhelm Fürtwangler.

Scenes from Paris (1)

The Kiss in the Musée Rodin. The French sculptor's famous depiction of the tragic lovers Francesca da Rimini and Paolo Malaesta is, simply, stunning. I've never seen any of Rodin's sculptures 'in the flesh' before. And it does feel like these marble and bronze masterpieces are, somehow, alive. Walking around the Parisian home of his sculptures – a house and gardens – it doesn't seem too ridiculous a flight of fancy that, perhaps, when your back is turned or after the key is turned in the gate lock at night and darkness has fallen, the sculptures draw breath, step off their plinths and go for a saunter and a steak-frites.