5/32 Short Films about Glenn Gould - Gould Meets Gould

Glenn Gould. An endlessly intriguing character!

Music and Matilda.

Imagine a girl of four years and three months going into a library and telling the librarian that she would like to read a book. To be more precise, ‘a really good one that grown-ups read. A famous one.’ How do you think the librarian might reply? In Roald Dahl’s Matilda, Mrs Phelps considers picking out ‘a young teenager’s romance’ but, to her surprise, finds herself ‘instinctively walking past that particular shelf’. Instead the ever-optimistic librarian chooses Charles Dicken’s Great Expectations. Four and a quarter year old Matilda enjoys the book, and begins to tackle volumes by other classic authors. Wading her way through a formidable array of books, she comes across Ernest Hemingway: ‘Mr Hemingway says a lot of things I don’t understand,’ Matilda comments. Mrs Phelps reassures her literary protégée, ‘ …don’t worry about the bits you can’t understand. Sit back and allow the words to wash around you, like music.’

Seems a pity to waste words. These didn't go into a short interview to celebrate Dahl Day 2007 that I recently did, but I think Mrs Phelps put her finger on the importance of not 'dumbing down'. Being able to approach words and music however you want is one of the best things about both arts.

London

 

Cameo Role

Wigmore Hall, Sunday 9th September 2007. All the Russian greats were there: Rachmaninov, Shostakovich, Tchaikovsky and Kissin. Though of course the first three were in musical form, the latter in a rather more tangible incarnation. Kissin played his cameo role to perfection, and who doesn't like a bit of celebrity-in-the-audience spotting? There was also a healthy dollop of Russian superstition. Boris Berezovsky, pianist of the Makhtin/Berezovsky/Kniazev piano trio explained that, just as the repertoire of that night (Rachmaninov, Shostakovich, Rachmaninov) was due to be recorded, their record company went 'spectacularly out of business'. So in order to ward off future bad luck, a change of programme was in order. Out with Rachmaninov and in with Tchaikovsky, who according to Berezovsky is 'another Russian composer'.Well said. Bridget Jones would be proud.

Let's make an opera...

I was excited to read that Ian McEwan, of Atonement fame, is writing a libretto for an opera, with music to be composed by Michael Berkeley. From descriptions of music in certain of his books, Ian McEwan's affinity with music is clear: "[the] guitar starts out alone with a languorous two-bar turnaround, a simple descending line from the fifth fret, tumbling into a thick chord which oozes into a second and remains hanging there, an unresolved fading seventh...." (from Saturday). Browsing McEwan's website, I discovered that he had already collaborated with Michael Berkeley, producing an oratorio entitled "Or Shall We Die?".

Soundtrack.

Currently listening to Joshua Bell's album The Romantic Violin (or should that be the romantic violin?) Oh to be a violinist, tugging away at people's heartstrings.

More Catspaws

Painting of the moment:
Catspaws off the Land , 1885
by Henry Moore



According to the Tate Britain's wall panels the "catspaws of the title are the gentle breezes which move the fishing boats along."

Unpublished post...

"He thought his happiness was complete when, as he meandered aimlessly along, suddenly he stood by the edge of a full-fed river. Never in his life had he seen a river before - this sleek, sinuous, full-bodied animal, chasing and chuckling, gripping things with a gurgle and leaving them with a laugh, to fling itself on fresh playmates that shook themselves free, and were caught and held again. All was a-shake and a-shiver - glints and gleams and sparkles, rustle and swirl, chatter and bubble."

The Mole encounters a river for the first time in Kenneth Grahame's The Wind in the Willows

I spent the Bank Holiday weekend (aka this year's summer) sharing the delights of the River Thames with a Russian friend who's visiting London. Kenneth Grahame's cheerful description of a river captures exactly how the Thames appeared, especially - and aptly - the section of river flowing past the River & Rowing Museum in Henley, which has exhibtions dedicated to both the river and The Wind and the Willows.

Sculptures.

 

Favourite sculptures as seen today in the art gallery of the world.

Paws for thought.

Are black cats lucky or unlucky? Does it make a difference if they cross in front of you? If one follows you for twenty minutes, sits outside your house mewing pitifully, then paces the windowsills - staring through the window panes with piercing eyes - is that luckier or unluckier than just a crossing cat? Or is said cat just hungry?

King's Parade, Cambridge

King's Parade, Cambridge
'Michaelmas Term'

From an original oil painting by Karen Pittaway

A cyclist and a Walker.

On a gentle Sunday afternoon cycle in the London summer drizzle today, I stumbled (so to speak) across a small-but-perfectly formed art allery in a local park. To one side of Pitzhanger-Manor House is the PM Gallery, and since yesterday this peaceful space has been home to the Hayward's touring exhibition entitled Walker Evans: Photographs 1935-36. "Walker Evans", states the exhibition guide, "endures as one of the most influential artists of the twentieth century. ... [He] had the extraordinary ability to see the present as if it were already the past. ... His principal subject was the American vernacular, as found in roadside stalls, cheap cafés, advertisements, simple bedrooms, and in small town main streets." Hung on four white walls, the black and white photos of churches, people, streets, roof-tops and the evidence of daily life speak simply, directly and honestly to the viewer. But at the same time this documentary style of photography - seemingly a simple recording of facts - is carried out with such artistic finesse that the images are imbued with an enigmatic quality making them quite mesmerising. A modern day Mona Lisa, suggests one of the information panels of the image lablled "Allie Mae Burroughs, Wife of a Cotton Sharecropper, Hale County, Alabama".